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
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
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
Jul 21, 2011 | Aviation, WRP Ed Zone
I’ve been working on this piece for over 18months and I’m very thrilled to see it finally up. What was the hang up? I’ll be real honest with you, the photography! It simply wasn’t dynamic enough to grab YOUR imagination when first submitted. But I’m a tenacious dood (yes, I know you spell it dude) and don’t give up when I feel strongly about any project. And as you can see and read, we produced a final piece that I’m very, very pleased with. Give it a read, it just might grab your imagination and take your photography for a flight! And if you need more fuel for your aviation imagination, be sure to check out our WarbirdImages site too.
Jul 18, 2011 | Aviation
Click Here to Hangar Pano.
It had been a long day. This is where I spent my Wed shooting like a crazy man, challenging my photographic skills, sweating profusely and loving every moment of it. At the end of the day, I wanted a image of my workplace but a simple, single click wouldn’t do. I mean, I had been doing HDR, flash fill VR panos for the past ten hours so why not keep the pain going. So dragged the ladder out into the sun, climbed to the top and did a 16Fish, 5 image HDR, 3 image wide, hand held pano. I mean what the hay…never tried that before.
As my folks learned this past weekend at Photoshop for Shooters, a good realistic HDR starts at the point of capture. It’s all about light, quantity and quality. The reason when I went with a 16Fish pano was because a single click from my vantage point cut off the left wing of the left Mustang and the right wing of the right Mustang. I wanted those wings so I needed to shoot three images across. Why doesn’t it look like a Fisheye shot? The horizon line is running dead center of the frame. And with the addition two image on either side of the main image, some of the bowing at the edges is avoided.
The finishing was pretty straight forward. The HDR was done with Photomatix Pro. The pano was assembled in Photoshop using Photomerge to assemble the three Tifs from Photomatix Pro. A little Nik Tonal Contrast, Darken/Lighten Center and Vivezza to brighten the back two planes and flag and all done. It was actually a whole lot easier to do then I first imagined. But then that’s true for a lot of things in photography. As long as you start with the basics and execute them correctly, it all seems to fall into place.
Photo captured by D3x, 16Fish on Lexar UDMA digital film
Jul 15, 2011 | Aviation
This plane has an amazing past! From War to Alaska to photo platform, this L1 has seen it all. I even saw an old B&W of it on a Disney set between takes (it was a photo platform) parked at Upper Newport where someone had erected a clothes line and was drying clothes on its struts. Well, all those modifications done to the L1 has been removed and it has been painstakingly with TLC put back to the smallest detail as it was when it came out of the factory.
Even the wire, “tiger stripe,” has been reproduced to modern code, to look like it is cotton wrapped so it is accurate. It is simply amazing! And for the second time in a month, I had the very good luck to be present when the last connection was being made and the starter was being tested for the first time on a restored aircraft.
With a “Clear!” the power went to the starter. This has an inertia starter that when the switch is thrown, spools up and when the ignition goes live, turns over the engine. The spark plugs were pulled so it wasn’t going to turn over, but Paul had the great joy of the first time it was tested, all worked perfectly. All the photography was done the same way. Shooting 1/5 – 1/8, f/5.6 – f/8 with the SB-900 with the LumiQuest Softbox handheld. It was a great day, lots of learning, fun photography and all part of a project that will culminate when I shoot the L1 air to air. I wanna thank all the folks at Fantasy of Flight and especially Paul for a great day!
