[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/dpa2ab170669.swf, 585, 473, [/swf]
“Lit’l Buddies,” that’s what some of the air crews nicknamed the bomber escorts over Europe during WWII. They were there to help defend the giant thousand plane armadas that went across the English Channel to bomb Germany. I really wanted that same escort for our B-17 and luckily, we got it.
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/_bmp2007.swf, 585, 473, [/swf]
Once we had a couple of orbits of the four ship formation, the B17, two P-51Ds and Supermarine Spitfire and then the B-17 peeled of and went back to base. After that, it was time to photograph just the three planes. Here is the Spitfire and P-51D against the Superstitious Mtns.
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/dpa2ab170772.swf, 585, 473, [/swf]
Here are the same two planes on the next orbit. One of the goals we teach at Air2Air is variety in the formations. This is for many reasons from editorial to keeping photographers interest.
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/dpa2ab170860.swf, 585, 473, [/swf]
When the light level dipped I decided to go for broke by lowering my shutter speed. I had been hovering between 1/125 and 1/90 for prop blur but with the angle of the sun really lighting up the props, I went for 1/45 to 1/60. You can see the different here as the arc is nearly 360degrees. Man, this was a great shoot!
Photos captured by D3x, 24-120AFS on Lexar UDMA digital film