Daniel Ruth, EAA 1298399, has many hobbies you’d expect from a ten-year-old: he is an infield catcher on a baseball team, is a Boy Scout, has a purple belt in Taekwondo, and loves video games. Not quite as expected: Daniel is a talented aviation photographer.
Daniel was born in Norway to parents Richard and Veronica Ruth, EAA 1069268 and 1298398. Aviation runs deep in the Ruth family; Richard’s grandfather was assigned to torpedo bomber squadrons in the Pacific theater during World War II, and his great uncle flew on B-24 Liberator missions over Europe. Richard grew up in Milwaukee, so his grandfather had even brought him many times to the EAA museum’s original home in Franklin, Wisconsin. After college, Richard made coming to AirVenture an annual goal.
While in Norway, Richard continued the tradition of attending air shows, and at just six months old, Daniel attended his very first air show at the 2013 NATO Tiger Meet in Ørland. The Ruth family continued to attend an air show every summer near Oslo.
Daniel and his parents moved to Florida in 2017, and they have attended every AirVenture since. Initially, the family would come for just one day each year, but they quickly realized that’s just not enough time to experience the whole convention. “We ended up spending almost the entire day at KidVenture, so the next time we were like, ‘Okay, one day is not going to cut it. We’re going to have to come at least two days.’” (I’m sure at this point, many of you readers know where this is going.) Richard continued, “Well, we ended up spending two days at KidVenture… then the next time, ‘Two days isn’t going to work. We’ve got to become weekers.’ And that’s what led to us volunteering… So now this is kind of our new life… we’re going to become permanent weekers.”
Daniel started volunteering at KidVenture in 2022, where he helps the pit crew at the control line flying area to refuel and start the model aircraft, and this year he also assisted at the control line registration desk. Seeing his son participate in aviation excites Richard for the future, “Kids are drawn to more kids… they want to see mentors that are close to their age. When they see Daniel there, they can talk to Daniel about the planes… So that’s kind of cool. It’s the next generation. It’s getting the kids interested in the STEM activities, the flying, and it’s not just a dying hobby.”
Daniel’s favorite part of volunteering is helping people get into aviation, but if you ask him his favorite part of AirVenture to photograph, well, in his own words, “The planes.” (If we’re talking specifics, he’ll tell you it’s the F-22s). Daniel started snapping photos in 2022 on his phone. He explained, “The phone can’t do great pictures, but I even thought the phone pictures were kind of cool. I used my dad’s camera a little bit, and my dad showed me some of his pictures. I was like, ‘Holy – I want my own!’” When his older sister found out about his budding interest, she gave him her camera and his dad bought all the parts he would need.
It wasn’t just Daniel’s family that supported him, but also AirVenture attendees. His mother, Veronica, recalls visitors making room for Daniel on the flightline so he could get the best shot. Richard was pleased to see other kids join Daniel, too. “He was making buddies down there on the flightline, trying to get the shots, sharing the shots, and it was awesome… seeing the kids out here, being exposed to so much and learning from kids their age. That’s the future.”
When Daniel showed an interest in photography, Richard started teaching him the ropes right away. “He learned a lot about composition… It was the Saturday night show, the moon was coming up, so I was kind of giving pointers. I said, ‘Daniel, position the moon because I bet you there are going to be some opportunities for these planes to be flying very close to the moon, see what you can do with that.’” And so Daniel did. “Next thing you know… I see him, he’s on the ground, he’s trying to get that perfect shot. It’s so cool that he’s understanding that composition is a big part of photography… it’s how you’re telling a story… it’s just something that was flowing naturally for him, and that was really cool to see.”
Daniel himself even gave us a quick lesson on capturing propeller-driven airplanes. “You need to have your shutter speed way down… if you have the shutter speed really high, then it’s a frozen prop. That doesn’t look good. It needs to be blurry, but that means you have to pick a spot on the plane and put your little crosshair on that, and track it when it moves, so only the prop is blurry and not the plane.”
When Daniel isn’t volunteering or on the flightline with his camera, there’s a good chance you’ll catch him staging his own interviews at exhibit booths. “We went in there and he’s talking to the guys about what y’all see on the displays and how they work, and I think even the guys were kind of impressed.” Veronica was also impressed. “Often times we can go [other] places and he’ll have questions, and people will just kind of blow him off because he’s just 10… but all the people he had questions for here, I didn’t feel like anybody ever blew him off. They took him seriously; they answered his questions.”
Daniel hopes to join the Civil Air Patrol when he is old enough, and he dreams of flying B-52s for the Air Force. Daniel, with help from his father, created an Instagram account to share his photography, so be sure to check him out @avgeekdanielr to follow along on his aviation journey!