There are lots of great New Year’s resolutions but one I don’t hear making the list is, improving one’s panning skills. I hear about buying gear or learning a software, but improving the most important aspect of photography, ourselves seems to get little love. Panning can only get better with practice, lots of practice! Unlike most other things in photography, if you need great panning tomorrow and you don’t have it today, you are screwed! So how about a New Year’s resolution of vastly improving your panning skills, starting today?! Here’s how.
Piper PA-11 captured by D5 / 80-400VR2
It starts by making proper hand-holding second nature so you start by practicing this technique, every day! I literally have a camera in my hand every day set to Manual, 1/20 (I practice with the D5 / 180-400VR at 400mm) focusing on and shooting items in the office getting a sharp photo. It just takes five minutes but it makes a difference. Then as often as I can during the week, I practice my panning photographing our dog Sadie as she runs around the property (currently practicing with Z6 / 70-200f4). I know this sounds really silly and I’m sure it looks even sillier if you were to watch me, but practicing and perfecting that muscle memory permits me to use this incredibly important tool whenever I need it. Bird flight and aircraft in the air are my classic examples of needing panning. The Mustang shot above, I was using a fast shutter speed for me, 1/50 while shooting the launch. While the Mustang is sharp, the background is not as blurred as I wanted. Knowing my own goof-ups, in the rush to get the shot (I was in Shutter Priority), I probably changed the shutter speed when I was lowering my exp comp and didn’t notice I hit the Shutter Speed in the process. But this just illustrates the importance of practicing panning because while I was messing with those controls, I was able to get a sharp image. Below is my video on panning basics. Remember to practice, practice, practice making panning a successful New Year’s Resolution!
For years and years, I’ve been after just one photo, a yellow plane parked in snow on a moonlit night. In my mind, I have it all set, all the tools in place, the perfect background. And that’s where the photo remains despite many attempts to make it all happen. It’s one of those ideas that I have at the top of my Idea File waiting for the right moment. What’re the issues making it happen? The #1 issue is the snow itself. These two photos of “The Beast” and the Waco GXE you can see there is snow, kinda, and that’s the problem. There’s not enough snow to make the photo. Next, the one time we had snow we had overcast skies for three nights so, no moonlight. Why do I want that moonlight? Well with the moonlight and the snow, there’s plenty of light to make the shot. But with overcast, no moon and so, no light.
The other obstacle is finding the right plane/plane owner who wants to push their aircraft in the cold of night to make the photo. While I do have three who have put up with my crazy idea so far, I feel really lucky to have those three. Lots and lots of aircraft owners in the winter don’t fly much because of the temps and the gray skies. Now those in warmer areas still fly, but this doesn’t have any snow. It’s just one of those things we plan into our schedule as the seasons roll by. It’s just one of many of our seasonal challenges.
“Doing the Dance” is a huge part of my photography! “The Dance” is removing those elements that take the eye away from the subject while including those elements that tell the story. There are many ways of doing this from lens selection, f/stop, where the camera is located and one of my favorites, exposure. To me, exposure = emotion and when I can incorporate this with hiding elements in the frame, I’m a happy photographer! Here’s an old classic example of what I’m talking about.
This C-17 Globemaster was parked down the ramp at the Reno Air Races. I fell in love with how the light wrapped around that huge fuselage. I hated all the “stuff” around it so I simply underexposed by -2 stops. Then in post, I brought up the highlights which were the underexposed to what you see here. I pulled down a Split-Grad in ACR, kissed it with Nik Color Efex Pro Contrast and I was done. The key in all of this is knowing the power of underexposure and what you are capable of doing in post. All this seems way too obvious after the fact, and it is. The trick is to remember this when the subject is staring you in the face. Other than I missed the symmetry being slightly off center, I really like this photo of this aviation giant!
“The Hawk” is simply this amazing aircraft going into service back in 1959. It was to replace the Cessna L-19 as an observation aircraft. This two-seat, twin turboprop badass aircraft could operate from small, unimproved fields under all weather conditions. Grumman pulled out all the stops making it faster, with greater firepower, heavier armor and the then state of the art Side-Looking Airborne Radar (SLAR). It’s best known for its service in Vietnam where some called it “The Frog” because of its large “eyes” observation windows. It’s all of that history and more I wanted to convey in this simple portrait of an OV-1B Mohawk. That brings up the question, where do you crop?
I was shooting with the Z7 / Z24-70, the zoom being key to the answer for me and my photography. In the top photo, you can see the entire aircraft, wing tip to wing tip. I shoot from a low angle to emphasize the importance of the subject in the frame. But by including wing tip to wing tip in the frame, that de-emphasize it so then simply zooming in brings it back. But that’s when you start cropping in on the subject. Here’s my general rule of thumb for myself, I keep the subject, in this case “The Frog” in the center of the frame and keep the furthest wing tip in the frame. While it doesn’t work 100% of the time, it’s the place I start. Keep in mind that for me, it all starts with the story I want to tell visually and then achieving that in the viewfinder.
It’s nose art time for “Hit or Miss” and progress continues towards Normandy Bound! Lots of the work being done on #43-48950 by Turin Aviation as “behind the panels” stuff that is required to make the C-47 fly (kinda important) gets done. And while we’re documenting that part of the restoration, it’s just not hard hitting photography. But with Joel here (a real famous artist) painting the nose art on, well that’s big-time visually exciting. So with the sun coming up, it’s work time!
I’ve been shooting with the Z7 now for a while, fun stuff and landscapes but this is its first opportunity to earn its keep. Shooting with the FTZ mount (8-15Fish, 14-24AFS, 105f1.4 & SB-5000), I’ve been using it like I would the D5. That means tons of use and abuse! The file size is at Medium for most images but otherwise, I’ve giving it no breaks. I gotta tell ya, so far it’s doin a great job and with its silent shutter, some of the up close candids are turing out real sweet as no one knows I’m really shooting. Its sthe mall size is working out sweet as well. It’s when I use a piece of gear in real world, money paying jobs that I really know if that piece of gear was worth the investment. There are three Z7s at work here today and they are all earning their keep. Because until this moment, it’s been all fun & games.
Just how big is that airplane, September Fate? If you’re fortunate to be around and love aircraft, you have a general idea just how big a particular aircraft might be but you still wouldn’t have guessed the size of September Fate. Even if I told you that I couldn’t get my closed fist under that fuselage (and that’s where the pilot sits), that wouldn’t help. And even though you might not know the size of an FG-1D Corsair, at least you can tell September Fate is a small aircraft since it appears to fit underneath it. Scale even in aviation photography helps tell a story!
Admiditly you can’t always park an aircraft next to an aircraft for scale (or have them fly that close to each other). You have lots of other options if you need to show scale. The easiest is simply having the pilot stand by the plane. You can actually manipulate this scale by how close or how far from the aircraft you have the pilot stand. At an airshow, there are often vehicles about from tugs, cars, and trucks. Anyone of these can bring scale to your photograph. The “trick” is using scale to speak about size while not being really obvious about it. The photograph above, it is blatant that I’m talking scale from this angle. The main photo though was not from the side but from the front to show off the “gullwing” construction of both planes. No matter what subject, scale helps in telling the story. Be creative and use your imagination by adding this small detail and your visual storytelling will grow.
