When we all look up to watch a passing aircraft, clouds are often in the background. They bring romance to so many aspects of photography, and this is very true for A2A. When the sun is rising and paints the landscape in long light, a background is in the book. When you have the coastal fog of the Bay Area receding back into the Pacific, well then, all is left if soak in a moment that rarely comes. Luck is such a huge factor in this that no matter how well you plan, you can’t plan the moment of fog. I just know when doin and A2A, I love keeping company with clouds.

A ton of drama can be added with a little tilt while you’re panning! Ah, Betty, I miss ya! We had the grand good fortune to spend many years with this grand old girl.This afforded me a whole lot of opportunities to try all sorts of ideas to bring her power and presence to the still image. The most effective, over and over again, was to simply tilt the camera body. Rather than keeping the camera body parallel to the ground, I would turn it to give a slightly different and more dramatic angle to the flight. It’s nothing more challenging than remembering to do it while you’re concentrating on panning, framing, and focus. Tilt baby, tilt!

For way too long, I took forgranted what I saw in my viewfinder. I thought foolishly that it would be there later. I could come back and photograph it, permitting me to turn my attention to some other subject. It took too many instances where life proved me wrong to realize to photograph it when I had it, and not later. The Cunningham Hill is an aircraft I knew nothing about, had never heard of it, the first time I saw it. Learning from past lessons, I photographed it all I could. We even were airborne to do an A2A with it when it was scrubbed as the Cunningham Hill had a mechanical. I’ve never seen it again. I know where it went, but it won’t ever fly again. Just passing along a hard-earned piece of life wisdom. Get it while you can!

Last March, I did as I suggested, looked in hangars during the depths of winter to see what summer projects I could create for my camera. Rod’s PT-22 was just about to have its engine hung, and plans were made, once he got comfortable in his new aircraft to do an A2A. I was incredibly excited and started to make plans. Now here’s the caveat to this whole idea. One has gotta follow through with those plans! I find that life can get in the way of life. For the first month, we couldn’t get calendars to sync. Then the next month, we simply didn’t try because we were both too busy. Then Rod got busy with another aircraft and well, shinny, shinny, shinny. So, here it is almost a year later and we’re still planning that A2A. While that’s OK, I really want those images. When sticking your head in the hangars seeking those projects, keep this in mind. You gotta have time in the future now when you head inside when it’s cold.

The wings get in the way at times is putting it mildly. There they are all lined up, the light is sweet and the color popping, a group of aircraft like this, Speedmail and friends. If you go with a wide angle lens to get them all included and you end up with way too much space around them, and they turn out to be small in the frame. In this scenario, I like to go long, like 400mm, and then go to the side to compact the aircraft. Lastly, I don’t worry about cropping into the back of the fuselage. Most know there is a tail, so the mind kinda fills it in. In that way, you say the gangs are all here.

There is an old saying in wildlife photography, Don’t photograph a bird in flight against a gray sky. It has to do with “gray day” feelings and the range of light. I heard the C-5 long before I saw it. Once I saw it and those skies, I thought I would make any clicks, but I tracked in with the Z600f4TC for simple panning practice. Then the light struck the fuselage, and I let the shutter rip. Now, I look for that opportunity, whenever I can do gray on gray.