“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.

It was such a marvelous conversation! John shared some gorgeous critter shots, a number of them my favorite topic, griz. The goal was to help John refine his visual storytelling. Then aircraft came up and the conversation went completely sideways, at least to the goal of talking critters. John commanded a unit of Mohawks during the war and rather than him asking me questions, I was asking him a whole bunch. It was a great conversation! John sent a very nice follow-up email and I replied with the photo you see here, taken some years back of a Mohawk. John instantly replied and I could see his smile as soon as I opened the email. That’s what it’s all about for me, memories, and John shared a bunch. Gotta love photography, bringing back memories.

The white stuff is not even on the ground and we’re planning a couple of A2A photo missions whose goal is to have the background all white. What’s to plan you ask? We start with where we want the flight to go. Open space, fields, hills, mountains, lake, just what does the plane owner want to be white. That’s important because each one of those backgrounds has certain pluses and minuses. Weather being the biggest variable and that in turn affects the AGL of the flight and that affects the storytelling. Much of this planning is in the hands of the pilots, the subject aircraft and the photo platform. They have to be comfortable not only with the colder temps but the challenges of winter flying. My input is more suggestions when they come up with a location. But that’s why we start now preparing for the white stuff.

Dirt! There was no black top back then, in fact, nearly all original commercial air service was from water seaports, as there were no tarmacs back then. It’s hard to imagine unless you spend some time with the old aircraft like this Fairchild KR-31. Look at the back, there’s no tire there. It’s a stick! Ala Doble Ranch provides a window into the past that is so cool to experience. It’s exciting to see launching from that old-time runway!