Tammie’s second career is flying medivacs, something she does with great passion. It’s a thankless job often because her passenger is on the edge of death. It can be days of boredom waiting on call and then seconds of high tension action when the call puts the team in action. And she does it was that smile bringing reassurance and professionalism to her life saving job!
I got two more pilot portraits in this past week, both with the D5, the first I’ve done with it and the D5 and it was sweet! This one of Tammie was the “rush” job. We had set up portrait for the afternoon (wanted the sun side lighting) but the thunderstorms were coming back so we had to push up the shoot. With the incoming thunderstorms comes the winds, fierce winds, it was a challenge but it was fun. The Helo is always parked in this spot on the call, ready to to fly so it was set in place. Tammie has those great glasses so the combo of the Helo and the glasses is how I determined where I was going to be and therefore, the Profoto B1 with the 5′ Octa. Sharon almost blew away with that big sail on the ramp, but as you can see, it worked out just fine. Where was the Octa? Carefully placed as close to the camera as it could be put at the spot so, Angle of Incidence equals Angle of Reflection put the Octa just out of the frame of her glasses. Love doing these, especially when they are so unique!
Last week it was me, this week it’s Jake, back to back covers for Trade-a-Plane! Darn cool and I’m thrilled to share the fun with my son. Life is good!
I’m incredibly excited my KelbyOne class on Aviation Post Processing is now live. The second in the series (Landscape went live a few weeks back) is 90minutes of techniques combining camera and computer clicks. The Landscape class compliments the Aviation class and the Aviation class compliments the landscape course. Check them out, lots of love and technique in them!
Oh ya, backgrounds really do matter and more often then not, are a big part of the visual storytelling. The way I think of it in my head is, the subject is the star and the rest of the photograph is the stage in which it performs on. Sure, you can go to a one star performance who stands on a bare stage and be totally entertained. But when you think about theater, that is the exception and not the rule. So setting that stage means we carefully look at that background so it supports our star, the subject, and doesn’t distract from it. It supports the story being told rather than starting a second conversation. This is a very simple example of what I’m talking about.
Shot just moments apart, the P-40K “Aleutian Tiger” from Texas Flying Legends danced in about out of the clouds. Well, that’s what it looks like in the photograph. When I told the pilot I loved the photos of him in the clouds, he quickly said, “I didn’t fly in any clouds!” When I showed him the photos, he smiled because he knew Moose was doing a Moose. That means, shooting with the D4s / 70-200f4, I used the lens to select the background I wanted to tell the story even if in the real world, the P-40 was no in the clouds. In this case, the clouds brings a totally different sense to the flight compared to seeing the earth. And that difference is what backgrounds are so important. So when framing up your photo no matter the subject, give that star a stage to perform on and your photo will reach its audience!
Flying the Texas Flying Legend (BTW … new site now up) fleet to the LA Airshow a few weeks back, the thought crossed my mind about doing a tribute to the folks who flew the B-25. Being a stills guy, thinking in terms of video is a bit of a brain stretch. After the fact, I KNOW so much more about how I’d do it so much better. But like everything in photography and storytelling, you gotta fail to grow. The sentiment though I started with hasn’t changed so here’s my first attempt as saying to all those men and women … thanks for the freedoms we enjoy!
