FJ-4 Fury

Aug 3, 2011 | Aviation

One of the challenges of B&W is having faith that your original gut feeling that the photo would makes a good B&W once you’re back in the digital darkroom. The process for me starts at the camera. This is a 5 image HDR, using it to grab all the nuances of the shading needed to make the B&W work. Once I compiled the HDR, I take that Tif into ACR to do some more subtle finishing. That includes using the Split Grad in ACR. What seems heavy heavy handed in ACR, the split grad once taken into Silver Efex Pro works perfectly with the shade of gray of the foreground and the side of the FJ-4. Now how did I know all of that when I made the click. I knew that because I failed many times before and learned from those failures to find success. The one problem with me and failure is that I do it so much, I have to remember the success so I can repeat it again. To me, this is another simple click since the total time invested in the image from click of the camera to click to save was just three minutes.

Photo captured by D3x, 24-120VR on Lexar UDMA digital film

Simple Click – Meetin the Sun

Aug 3, 2011 | Aviation

A T-28 at sunrise. I liked the drama of the moment, not sure on finishing but its a start.

Ready to Meet the Storm, the Back Story

Aug 3, 2011 | Aviation

My image of the P-38 Lightning over on my warbirdimages.com site has brought in a huge response. I appreciate all the kind words the image has brought and it tells me that it is successful since it has reached so many. At the same time, it has brought up a number of questions that I would like to try to address hoping it helps you with your photography. The two main questions are why HDR and why B&W? For my style of photography, be it critter, landscape or plane, background is everything. When we arrived at Oshkosh and that storm came in, the drama in the clouds couldn’t be ignored. The challenge was to find the appropriate foreground for the clouds. The P-38 was a great foreground so then I just had to perfect in the viewfinder what I needed to tell the story. The image title of Ready to Meet the Storm came to mind while looking through the viewfinder so I made this first HDR image. I didn’t like the tarmac under the wing so I moved in closer to the plane to eliminate it. That was a huge improvement as you can see here.

With the background now cleaned up, perfecting the drama was next in order. If you look at the clouds in the color version compared to the B&W, you will see what I think is a huge difference. The color version is the 5 image HDR, I do all the HDR and PS finishing before I go to B&W. Even with that, you don’t see the drama in the clouds. That doesn’t come out until the B&W and the magic of Structure in Silver Efex Pro. Then, it’s a balancing act between the Brightness and Contrast. Finally I punch up some of the fuselage with a Levels layer. Now if there was no cover on the canopy, I might have approached the whole thing totally differently but such was not the case. Keep in mind that a B&W photo must have a clean black and a clean white and after that, you can play with the tones all you want. I hope this answers some of your questions on how the final image (the bottom one) came to be. Thanks again for writing with all your kind words!

Photo captured by D3x, 24-120VR on Lexar UDMA digital film

And the Storm Rolls into Oshkosh

Aug 2, 2011 | Aviation

We landed at Oshkosh and got a killer campsite. We actually camp right at the plane as you can see here. We’re at what’s called North 40 and I can’t recommend it enough! We made so many new friends and did so much business without ever leaving the plane it’s mind boggling. I remembered my lesson from last year at Osh, it’s all about the people and Osh this year confirmed that all over again for us. We retrieved our Pelican case, set up camp, walked over to have a Mexican dinner, hit Target and came back to relax at camp. The storm had been forming all afternoon and then at sunset, it was gorgeous!

Jake headed east, I went west and we worked the light. I grabbed the 14-24 and went looking for foregrounds. Of course I had to do the campsite and then I went running off to an aircraft that ~really~ caught my attention and imagination. This Turbo Beaver (just imagine where it would take you in Alaska!) was gorgeous. I moved with the clouds which were moving pretty fast to catch their drama with a clean portrait of the plane. I really didn’t get the best angle of the plane with the clouds, but I’m not about to delete these images either.

I would have loved to just used a split grad to make the shots, but it was left at home. While it weighs nothing, weight and space were on my mind. Since I knew I could HDR anything that I thought I would use a split grad for to compress the light, I wasn’t worried. That’s what you have here, three HDR images. All are 5 image sets, shot handheld. The one thing I had to do was create a saturation layer in Photoshop to remove the horrible bright red the HDR made of the tents. Other then that, it was pretty simple. Like I said, it was a great campsite. Look at the scenery! And the storm, it rained, blew and thundered for five hours. It was great camping weather, I was big time fun. As Scottie would say, good times!

Photos captured by D3x, 14-24AFS on Lexar UDMA digital film

Off to Osh ’11

Aug 2, 2011 | Aviation

Last week we were at the greatest gathering of aircraft in the world, Oshkosh! Many have asked where were my blogs from the event as last year I blogged every night from there. It almost killed me and I wasn’t really working last year so this year, I knew there was no way I could blog at night. So, I’m going to blog the event now. Like last year, we flew into Wichita and then hitched at ride in the Cessna 206 up to Oshkosh. What we call the “Man Trip,” my dear friend Kevin, good friend Scottie, Jake and I made the 5hr flight up. On of the HUGE tasks is CG and useful load. What that means in simple terms, I could only have about 50lbs of camera gear, camping gear, clothes in the plane. As the world knows, I can’t do that so I FedExed a Pelican up to Oshkosh.

To beat the heat (109 in Wichita the day before), we left early which meant packing the 206 before sun up. The sun is just coming over the horizon and Scottie and Kevin were finishing up the preflight. Both images are 5 image HDR hand held photos. Why HDR? One, my flashes were in the Pelican case. Two, shooting with the 16mm and the sun coming up, I knew the range of light from right to left side of the frame would be more then five stops. Lastly, I wanted the color of the moment in the photo. The top photo I left Kevin ghosted to show the action. Scottie didn’t look so good ghosted so I processed the NEF with the best “head” shot and brushed that into the HDR image. The cockpit shot was the challenge. Ever tried to do a handheld HDR in a 206 flying? While the flight was smooth, I had to just hold the camera up and guess at the framing. I couldn’t get behind the camera to see through the viewfinder let alone proper handhold. I lucked out, I really like the shot. It is so typical. Kevin is all business flying the plane and Scottie is on the Garmin like it’s a 1970s Pong game. To say we had fun on the flight is an understatement!

A number of folks asked why I chose the 16Fish and HDR for these images. The lens choice is simple, it’s really small and in the back seat of a 206, less is more. At the same time, anything longer and I wouldn’t have been able to capture the whole cabin in one click. With that in mind, shooting in the cabin meant including the windows and outside. That instantly took the light way beyond five stops and since I didn’t it want it looking like we were flying in a sheet, HDR captured the exposure for the sky.

Photos captured by D3x, 16Fish on Lexar UDMA digital film