Police, Rickety Planes Fail to Deter Engineer/Photographer Alum by Jean Arthur At times, Kyle Amstadter, '03 ME, wishes he lacked a thorough understanding of mechanics. Amstadter found himself trying to erase his engineering knowledge last summer as he flew over Uzbekistan. He was seated in a 1960s-era Soviet-made Yak 40 transport airplane that whined like a dog with a broken leg. Other times, his engineering background saved the day and the photographs. He dismantled a Nikon camera at 14,000 feet on a wind-scoured mountain, fixed a film-advance mechanism and put the camera back together--successfully. He spent months at a time among some of the world's tallest peaks, most remote villages and distinctive peoples. With an MSU Undergraduate Scholars Program scholarship, Amstadter traveled to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. It was en route to some of his photo subjects that Amstadter bought a plane ticket and flew aboard the Yak 40. "It began with a terrifying taxi ride from the capital city, Bishkek, to Jalal Abad in Kyrgyzstan," he says. "The taxi driver spent most of the time on the wrong side of the road. There were huge craters and many portions of the road were not paved. "So on the way back, I bought an airplane ticket. The Yak 40, a Soviet model, probably was not maintained for the last dozen years either. As we flew at 20,000 feet, I was wishing I was not a mechanical engineer, and that I didn't know what made the plane's vibrations--an imbalance in a motor or propeller." During the summer of 2002, Amstadter spent eight weeks in the region on a telemark skiing expedition and another four weeks with a kayak expedition last summer. Some of his images have been published in the Patagonia catalog, Back Country magazine, Rock and Ice, and Bergsteiger, the German equivalent of Outside magazine. "I spent six weeks before the kayak trip working on the images for the MSU scholarship," he says, noting that he packed 200 rolls of slide film, 40 pounds of camera gear and his scanty Russian language skills. While Amstadter was sufficiently prepared for the travel, he was not prepared for arrest. Kyrgz police saw his camera shutter fire too many times and tried to arrest him on four different occasions. Police suspected the young bearded American was a spy. "Fortunately, I speak Russian at a basic level pretty well," says Amstadter, who took Russian classes last year. "I avoided arrest by obstinate bluffing." Each time he was threatened, Amstadter would say that he had a friend in the military or as a police chief. "I'd write down the police officer's name and his badge number," says Amstadter. "They always wanted to take me to headquarters which meant a large bribe to leave." "Photography has a significant technical component, and the optics, the chemistry and the machine seem to appeal to artistic people with a technical inclination," says John Hooton, media and theatre arts. "Kyle took just two photography classes but took to the technical information quickly and established his visual acumen, then forged into commercial and journalistic work right away." Next for the wanderlust-stricken engineer is tidying his Web site, www.mtnphotos.com. Then, "I would like to ride my bike across either part of China or Bolivia if I can get the timing right between school and an engineering job," he says.