Jul 7, 2015 | Aviation
Ever since I first saw the Monocoupe 110 Special a couple of years back, it has been on the top of my list of aircraft to photograph. This individual plane is a very historic aircraft. The badass of the 30’s built by a farmer, it just has the meanest lines. So when photographing it as a static, making the most of those lines is essential both in telling its unique story and being photographically pleasing. At the same time, planes are meant to be in the sky, not sitting on the ground. So that needs to be included in the storytelling as well. Hard for one photograph to do it all. Then there are clouds.
We started the morning “trapped” in the hangar by a huge thunderstorm. You don’t take such aircraft as this out in the rain. So after the sun had kissed the horizon, we pushed it out and into place. Actually, we pushed out four aircraft his morning for the folks of our AirAdventure to photograph. Being the most esoteric of the planes (two others were a Zero and Corsair), I figured I’d be the only one wanting to photograph the Monocoupe. Wrong! All saw the beauty in its lines as the morning unfolded. With a wet tarmac, a basically clean background wherever you point your lens and light that didn’t suck, the photography was easy. But then if you go with making the uncommon out of the common, the challenge arose.
The top frame was taken at 05:45 and you can see the skies, pretty bald. The thunderstorm let go all their energy so the clouds dissipated. Once the sun rose though the cycle started over and clouds started to build. Shooting with the D750 / 14-24AFS, the newly formed clouds made for a gorgeous background. But this was still a common shot, no more than taking a knee and shooting up. The second photo was taken at 06:15. Watching the winds, the clouds not only behind the Monocoupe but behind us as well to predict the light, waiting and physically moving was called for. The third photo, the one I wanted was taken at 06:22. If you have a wild imagination you can see an outline of a plane in the clouds. All three photos were taken with the same gear and finished the same way (ACR & Color Efex Pro Contrast + Tonal Contrast + Darken/Lighten) but all three were taken at different angles based on the clouds. So while clouds in themselves make a photo, in order to make the uncommon, you gotta work the clouds!
Jul 3, 2015 | Aviation
This 4th, while fireworks are so very cool, I want to encourage photographers to also point their cameras at something else as we celebrate the 4th. Our families are such an important part of our lives and the 4th is the one day each year we tend to gather and celebrate being a family. The freedoms the 4th represents in large part are the sacrifices many families have made for over two hundred years so we can celebrate the 4th. The American family like the Engkvists in North Dakota are great examples of that celebration. So this weekend amongst the watermelon and fireworks, count your blessings and turn that camera on the family. A memory that must always be told and recorded forever.
Jul 2, 2015 | Aviation
Ever since I posted Fadin Fast, a whole bunch of emails have come in asking how I got the photo. It is something you all can do! The very first ingredient in getting the photo is establishing an amazing working and personal relationship with a special group of plane owners and pilots. That relationship with your subject, be it person, place or thing is essential cause that’s how YOU become the storyteller. Then it’s having the basics well established along with viable tools, that’s handholding and panning. Then there is an imagination that hooks up with what life is presenting. And finally, putting that together when a pilot says, “Want do you want?”
In this case, I was at a private airstrip for an evening BBQ with a special group of friends. The day’s work was done so to relax and celebrate the great freedom we are so fortunate to enjoy, the Piper J-3 and PA-11 are pulled out, preflighted and take to the air. No ceremony, it’s just what we do and it’s like no other place in the world. You have some of the world’s best pilots showing their craft, you have others teaching and others who just soloed and those who want to all coming together in a celebration of flight. And then there is me, there with my D4s / 80-400VR3 telling the unique story of the evening. Smoke from wildfires in Canada had blown down, filling the beautiful skies with its brown muck.
As the sun tried to set in the smoke, it was set a blaze creating a fireball. One pilot sitting there watching me shoot, asked what all the body English was as the PA-11 went by. I said, “I want a shot of the plane going into the sun, I’m trying to will it over.” With that, Bernie hoped into the J-3 (which I had earlier received my first flying lesson in from him) and said, “We can do that.” And that’s how I got the photo. And now you know how, you can make the same thing happen cause the possibilities for us all are endless!
Jun 30, 2015 | Aviation
If there is one better reason than common sense why to constantly practice your panning, it has to be the unexpected opportunities. This past weekend is a prime example. There we were in the midst of our K&M AirAdventure when there was a need for a maintenance flight for the FG-1D Corsair. We were offered the opportunity for the whole gang to head to what’s called “Moose Stump Hill” to photograph the Corsair at evelevel and lower. Well, with such an opportunity, off we went!
Showing the speed of the Corsair is REAL easy when you use a slow shutter speed. Blurring the prop to show motion is real easy with a slow shutter speed. Getting a real sharp image at a slow shutter speed when you panning while composing the moving subject is really, really hard. Hard if you don’t practice your panning all the time. Because when you have an opportunity like this is not the time to practice. Unless you want to hate yourself in the morning. So shooting with the D4s/ 80-400VR3 which I shoot with quite often, this was a stroll in the park, and a ton of fun!
Oh, and flying dirty, that’s an aviation term. It refers to lowering flaps to cut your airspeed, and if you need to drop more speed, dropping the landing gear. The top photo, that’s what a Corsair looks like just prior to slamming on a carrier deck. So everything is down, from flaps to landing hook and canopy is open in case of a bad landing, the pilot can get out faster. This is text book carrier landing at its finest flown by my dear friend, Warren Pietsch. This photo now is the wallpaper on his computer, one damn fine reason to never let the panning get rusty!
Jun 29, 2015 | Aviation
3, 20hrs days … I’m fadin fast so this is it for today.
Jun 23, 2015 | Aviation
On the opposite end of the spectrum of Bad Light is the solid overcast. Color needs light to pop in our images. While our mind’s eye (combination of our vision and brain) make it possible for us to see color in any light, the camera, not so much. The color is there, in fact in overcast light the color can be really saturated and more vibrant than normal if you know your craft and recognize the light source for what it is and shoot accordingly. I put up these examples to illustrate my points.
The first thing to take advantage of the saturated color in this bad light is your White Balance. You might think since there are clouds, switch to Cloudy which is an option (that’s 6000k). I went to the Sunny or more importantly, 5500k for my White Balance. Why? Using Auto White Balance (AWB) will get you in a situation like this, about 4200-4600k which to the untrained eye, an ok looking photo, color wise. But we don’t want just ok, we want the color saturation the light is providing. Simply going up to 5500k will bring out that color. I like simple. Next, exposure. You might want to not underexpose but be at Zero comp or with the D4s, at +1/3. It all depends on the deepness of the overcast and as you can see here, we had true English deep overcast (all these photo taken during our England Aviation Class at Duxford in April).
One final thing I like to do, and this is a little harder to previsualize and that’s the placement of the color. Color Contrast is something I use in my photography ALL the time. In this case, I looked at the “shades” of gray in the background and shot when the aircraft were not in front of a solid shade of gray. Shooting with the D4s / 80-400VR3 and shooting with both eyes open, seeing what is coming for a background something I do in my shooting to maximize my results. The key here is to understand the nature of the light and make it work for your photography. You’d be surprised how there is in bad light color too!
