Simple Click – Seriously, Keys?
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/DAPARRR26129.swf, 585, 473 [/swf]
Taking off from some Pacific atoll in WWII, the Corsair hit the skies. Flying or static, just darn cool!
Classic Gas!
Yeah Baby, they haul ass! Hawker Sea Fury is a pretty darn cool Korean War vet. The paint scheme of the Dreadnought just begs to be photographed.
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/_bmp2008-1.swf, 585, 473 [/swf]
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/_bmp2187-1.swf, 585, 473 [/swf]
My personal challenge continued with this speedster, showing off the romance of flight with the bat out of hell profile. During the Sept races the planes fly a pretty tight track around the course, not so during PRS so each time they come around the course they are a different distance from you. This gives you different opportunities to make all sorts of different images.
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/_bmp8084-1.swf, 585, 473 [/swf]
With clouds in the background, romance and speed is much easier to capture. Throw in a really low pass along the ridgeline at Pylon#4 and you’re golden!
Photos captured by D3s, 200-400VR2 on Lexar UDMA digital film
A Little Jet Action
Typically in June, Reno is HOT, like 90-100 hot. Typical though for my year, the heat I wanted for the afternoon thunderstorms was only 69 the first day. Not makin no clouds when it’s that cold. On Thursday, a little thermal action happened and the clouds began to form.
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/_bmp7608.swf, 585, 473 [/swf]
We were at Pylon #4 and saw the clouds forming. When there are great clouds you wanta be at Pylon #5. But you just can’t drive wherever you want on the course whenever you want. FAA and all that stuff. So, we had our eyes on Pylon#5 but didn’t make the move until we knew it was the place to be. Pylon#4 don’t suck so didn’t want to leave a great place but we didn’t dare jinx ourselves and move early.
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/_bmp8459.swf, 585, 473 [/swf]
Above is a L-39 Albratros which soon was joined by a TS-11 Iskra (with a hot paint job). You might be looking at the clouds and thinking, “did they move?”
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/_bmp2241.swf, 585, 473 [/swf]
Nope, we didn’t move this day, the clouds just never got to have any real drama to them. There were little wisps here and there like you see here which were nice, but you had to watch very carefully in the viewfinder as you panned to capture those small wisps in the background.
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/_bmp7336.swf, 585, 473 [/swf]
The color of the TS-11 Iskra against the blue sky with the hint of clouds just rocked though. And it was great fun and a challenge to capturing it in front of the right wisp of clouds. It makes shooting at the pylons fun!
Photos captured by D3s, 200-400VR2 on Lexar UDMA digital film
How Do I Spell Speed?
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/_bmp6685.swf, 585, 473 [/swf]
Cranking at 450mph, the P-51 cuts through the sky with amazing speed and grace. It’s hard to imagine what they were like over the skies of Europe in WWII.
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/_bmp8030.swf, 585, 473 [/swf]
Bringing to life that speed and grace I think is a real challenge. What if you focus on the second plane in so doing blurring the lead plane. Does that communicate their speed?
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/_bmp2122.swf, 585, 473 [/swf]
Of course I’m shooting in Shutter Speed priority at 1/180 to get prop blur. That adds to the illusion of speed, as does shooting it diving and moving away from the camera.
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/_bmp8153.swf, 585, 473 [/swf]
But I think it’s the combination of all these things with a blurred background that really does the job. You might wondering about the placement of the P-51 in this last frame. Personally I really like it, makes it feel like it’s screaming up from some airfield to do battle with incoming enemy planes. The romance of flight, I’m still workin on it and in the meantime, I spell speed P-51D
Photo captured by D3s, 200-400VR2 on Lexar UDMA digital film
Simple Click – Light at 6000 Feet
My big push is to put the romance into my aviation photography. The biggest key to bringing in that romance is light. Just like in all of my photography, light is what sucks the person into the photo first.
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/DPA2AT61507_2.swf, 585, 473 [/swf]
And to answer a question many are sending in right now, yes, I was in another plane and this is an air to air shoot. mtc on that.
MiG Morning
We decided to get up at 4am so we could be on the flight line at 5am for sunrise. It always sounds like such a smart idea the night before. It was pretty quite on the ramp so we moseyed down to the far east end where a bunch of MiGs were parked. There is a firm there that reconditions them for resale. So I kissed the tarmac, placed the camera on the ground, put the bracketing to 5 images and produced some HDRs (yeap, did handheld HDRs).
My static plane photography needs lots of work. I’m building up my inventory of plane images so this little exercise helps both. Making something that’s designed to go Mach look good when parked on the ground I find quite a challenge. Being such I do a lot of it with most of it ending up in the Trash Can. I keep working on it though with these I kept.
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/_bmp0728.swf, 585, 473 [/swf]
This is a MiG 21
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/_bmp0743.swf, 585, 473 [/swf]
This is a MiG 15 Midget
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/_bmp0794.swf, 585, 473 [/swf]
This is a MiG 21 Mongol
Photos captured by D3s, 70-200VR2 on Lexar UDMA digital film