Once the press were gone and the field got quite, pilots do what pilots love best, fly! So many jumped into their planes and went off for some fun. Jake and I were nearly alone and were afforded an opportunity to shoot the activity from the grass stripe between the runways. This not only put us close to the planes but down in a drainage ditch providing us a great view of the aircraft. And Jake and I took advantage of the location, light and clouds with glee!
Shooting with the D4s / 80-400VR3, it was fun and like shooting fish in a barrel. The L Birds first flew overhead in perfect formation and seeing the wind direction, we got in place knowing how the direction they were landing, how’d they taxi and where they wanted to head. So what I think of as a “very happy” plane shot came about. I call it happy because of those three elements Jay Maisel says so well are important in a photograph, light, gesture, color.
Now because of the direction of the light, I wasn’t worried about getting a full disk blur so I shot at 1/80. Now a slower shutter speed would have blurred the background nicer but standing on the side of the ditch, I didn’t feel stable with my panning so stayed with the faster shutter speed. I was shooting in Shutter Priority so controlled the shutter speed for those reasons. It was great fun and so enjoyable to watch and photograph what these pilots do so well. Life is good. mtc.