It’s actually pretty simple, walk into a hangar and photograph a plane. And it is for the most part taking into consideration a couple of things. The biggest is light. Hangars have overhead lights, which may or may not be nice light for a portrait. You can add to that, even overpower it, with the light coming in from the hangar doors. Here is the biggest trick to the hangar portrait, how far open or closed are the hangar doors to be? You can make the change. That’s a lot easier than changing a bad background. If you have an unwanted background, use exposure to make it disappear. Close the hangar doors to limit the light on the background if need be. If you have an immaculate hangar like the one above, it’s like walking into a studio with a white sweep for a portrait. After that, it’s all up to you to make the most of the hangar portrait.

The summer is when lots of flying is done. It makes winter an important time to catch up on needed repairs and get ready for when the weather warms up. An important part of maintenance is testing, and this often requires a flight or two. You’d be surprised how many of my A2A photo missions are maintenance flights. If you stuck your head into folk’s hangars who fly the airshow circuit, you’d be surprised by the photos you would come back with simply asking if they are doing any maintenance flights. It’s one of those things, just show up, it’s maintenance flight time.

It was a beautiful afternoon at Rainbow Ranch! We had a picnic lunch sitting outside, able to to just stare at this gorgeous, red Staggerwing. And behind it, a beautiful bluebird blue sky bald as could be. Argh. The light was hard, the sky boring, so I sat and enjoyed the killer lunch. Then the wind picked up, a mad scramble to hold down the contents of the picnic. As we moved the picnic to the safety of inside the hangar, I walked around and looked to the southwest. There on the horizon coming our direction were some clouds. It didn’t really take long to arrive, a sandwich and homemade ice cream were all, and they started to fill in. There weren’t many so I sat there ready to click. Then a cloud came in front of the sun and I jumped! It just took a picnic, a little time and luck to make the click. And the clouds for the save!

“Where do you want to go?” A common question in an A2A brief, translates it means, “What do you want for a background?” I normally know what I want and point on a sectional where I’d like to go. As a courtesy, I ask the plane owner, who normally says, “I don’t know?” This leaves the door open to my storytelling ideas. This time though, the answer came back, “SNOW!” It was magical and got me hooked on a background I can’t easily find and even less often use. First snow is on the ground so I’m on the hunt, crusin for the snow.

With the table getting prepared for tomorrow’s great feast, my mind is definitely on turkey. TBM Avenger that is. This 18000lbs bird got its nickname from its waddle when it taxied. But when it came to carrying a bomb load and putting it on the target, it excelled!

I like to use those tools at hand when it comes to tellin a story. A big part of telling a story is light. Out of the photo to the right are two hangars, the front to them join at 90-degree angles. The sun comes up behind the hangars, slowly creating a slice of light that strikes the tarmac and grows as the sun rises. It’s in this slice of light I like to park a plane (in the dark) for its portrait. The game I play with myself is the angle I park the plane, in the dark, to where I think the light will strike it at sunrise. I’ve managed to get pretty darn close over the years.

There are many options when shooting statics, we can all pick the angle we prefer. My preference comes from the old illustrations of WWII aircraft, especially when showing paint schemes. Thought of as a broadside view, Fuselage Reference Line (FRL) comes from the engineering drawings for an aircraft. It’s at the FRL I place myself (photo at the top). I have the Z50f1.2 set to f1.2, I move so I’m laterally at the CG point on the aircraft and the film plane is parallel to the whole fuselage. Then I use light to work its magic to make the photo. It’s fun to do and we can all be good when you pick your point of view.