Brian Schul was a friend of mine; I met him in 1987 when he was at Kadena as an SR 71 pilot. He was a very good athlete and we competed in several racquetball tournaments at Kadena at the Risner sports complex, where at the time, they had many racquetball courts. Two of the courts had glass back walls so viewers could watch the action.
In one particular tournament Brian and I both entered the open and the seniors division of the tournament. I had also entered the doubles division with a sergeant that worked in the ELINT analysis group. My wife, Janis, took quite a few pictures during our games. The end result was Brian defeated me for the title in the open division I defeated Brian for the title in the seniors division and my sergeant friend and I won the Doubles division. The SR71 DET at Kadena at captured all the trophies. During one of our intermissions when we were toweling off outside the court, a young lady came up to Brian and asked if Brian Schul was his name; of course he said yes. The young lady was a nurse at one of the hospitals on the base and said that she had was been at Brooks Medical Center and had studied Brian’s case of burns and recovery from a crash he had in Vietnam, prior to becoming an SR 71 pilot.
Shortly after the tournament, Brian came over to our off base apartment and showed Jan I several pictures he had been taking while flying the SR 71. He explained that he had focused his camera on his helmet face plate, which was like a mirror, and while the faceplate was in focus, the images in the faceplate were not. I mentioned to him that the images were actually in the far field not the near field of his face plate. Janice told Brian “If you want the images to be in focus, you have to either focus on the far field or reduce the aperture so that your depth of field was increased to a point where the images and the face plate would be in focus”.
After Brian retired from the Air Force he set up a photography studio called the Gallery One in Marysville CA, and became a ardent wildlife supporter. A tour of his gallery is a great opportunity to see images of all the flying creatures he captured with his lens. With most of his photographs centered on birds but other opportunities of nature did not escape him either.
RIP Brian Shul