When the first explosion went off, the P-40 was the furthest physically from me and that’s when I hit the shutter release. The camera did all the heavy lifting as the P-40 approached, I just panned keeping the P-40 dead center. I continued the pan until the P-40 had only blue sky behind it. I had not noticed that a good friend and pilot I work with was sitting behind me during my shooting. He said, “I could hear your camera like it was a machine gun during that pass. You get the shot?” With Alan looking over my shoulder, we went through them. The best part was not seeing that I had indeed captured the moment, it was what Alan learned about me and photography from it. The next A2A we did together was the best as Alan now understood how important the background is to my photography. It really can make a big impact, right place, right time!

Jake & I were at the MT Aviation Conference in March in Missoula, we had a booth there for the simple purpose of meeting more of the MT aviation community. One of the cool folks we meet, Thom has an annual invite fly-in called Round Engine Roundup. It’s also a major Staggerwing gathering and since it’s just down the road in Idaho, Jake & I thought it might be fun. We signed up and this weekend we are at this great event! It started last night on a grass strip on the edge of a wheat field. The photo above is the hangar on that strip in which the dinner was held. We literally knew nobody when we showed up, by darkness, we had a bunch of new friends, many were friends of other friends of ours in aviation. There was a lot of great food, conversation and planning for the next days flying. It always amazes me what a small world it truly is when you start talking with folks and the possibilities that all of a sudden become possible. Like I always advise those wanting to get into aviation photography, just show up. We did and we came away with a hangar of new friends!

When we look up at an aircraft flying overhead, we often see clouds in the process. We naturally associate flying aircraft with clouds so incorporating them in our photographs is just a natural. In the summer, the wx patterns in North America make for great, afternoon clouds. often thunderheads. The drama in these clouds are a killer background, stage for our aircraft. But there is definitely a ying and a yang when it comes to summer clouds. The ying is the incredible drama they bring to a photograph. And for some aircraft like this Wildcat, it finished the story for the Pacific WWII fighter. They flew through clouds like this going to and from battle. At the beginning of their use, they used the clouds also to hide from the Zero, but that’s another story. The yang of having these clouds is they can stop flying all together. I will always remember my father’s story of a B-29 flying through a cloud like these in the Pacific during he Korean conflict and it not coming back out. Along with the power in these clouds are flight rules like VFR and IFR. Doing an A2A like we did here took great planning, willingness to stay aloft to work the clouds, using a long lens (I shot at 400mm) to pull the clouds in from a distance and very talented pilots. I’m planning my shoots for the next couple months carefully because summer means great clouds!

Before starting and at the end of photographing Kodiak Brown Bears for two weeks, I squeezed in a little aviation photography. We’ve worked with Willy and his delightful wife for a while now, getting our tonnage flown into and out of Bear Camp. He’s the best! I wanted to add to my library images of his aircraft so this year you could say, I went for broke. I wanted to blur the background much more than I did last shoot and make the Beaver look a little faster on the water. That meant going with a slow shutter speed, a low percentage shot. I set the Z 9 to Shutter Priority and the shutter speed to 1/30. I was using the Z70-200f2.8 with the Z1.4x so the camera could go to f32 if it needed (it went to f/22) to to work with that shutter speed. With the Z 9 set to Auto Area AF, all that was needed was a smooth pan and in theory, I’d have the shot. As it turned out, I had a hole bunch of images to pick from, the Z 9 and the panning all worked as they should. And Willy, he not only has a whole bunch of photos to select from, he gave us a ride back to civilization!

Aircraft are just wood, fabric, and metal but you give them life by the way you tell their story. There is no easier or more powerful way of giving that story a kickstart than through white balance. This is a real simple idea. The light on the ramp this morning was pretty cold as far as the camera was concerned but I saw the glow in the east and knew it would come through the photograph if, if I took control of the white balance. I went to K and then set the white balance manually to 8000k and shot away. Why do this in-camera when you can do it all in post? One reason is that the camera is your data capture device, I want it to capture all the data, correct data when I go click. Mostly, a year from after taking the photo and I’m looking at those images, I want to SEE in my photos what I was feeling and thinking that morning. I can’t count on my memory to do so. And that’s what photography is all about, preserving memories!

Spring greens are unique. They have a unique tint setting them apart from the rest of the year which is why they scream, spring. If you want that in your aviation photos, you gotta plan for it and then go and get it. The foothills of California have a gorgeous carpet of green in spring but it doesn’t last long. As you can see here, some patches were already turning summer brown before it all got green. But for these two red aircraft, it was the perfect background to tell the story and that’s what we’re going for. When planning your shoot, try to incorporate the season with the background to bring more story depth to your photos.