Racing across the countryside, the red of the Waco GXE makes it easy to pick out in the fading light. You don’t need to drag the shutter and blur the background to make it appear to be going fast. That color and simple accent screams speed all on its own. Ben knows how to fly and when the lens is pointed his way, bringing it all together in the flight. Watching it through the viewfinder, all I could think was, that color!

The lineup of aircraft was off the shelf! The skies were bald, bald, bald! Gotta make lemonade so as the sun made its way towards the horizon, I thought of starbursts. The new Z24-70f2.8 with its 11 app blades creates a gorgeous starburst when the aperture is shut down to f/22. I went to the Travel 4000 first and made the click. Walked down to the Waco and started to level out the wings in the LCD and saw the rudder was at a slight turn. I started to get up to straighten it (with permission from its owner) when the glint caught my eye. The slight angle of the rudder caught the sun, creating an additional starburst. Perfect, twofer!

It’s fall, that glorious time of year we can celebrate gorgeous light and the fruits of our year’s labor. Fall is often celebrated with bright oranges, reds and yellows. There are other colors of fall, other symbols of the season we can take advantage of when staring down back at earth. Many crops are harvested this time of year, their green fields turning that sweet amber brown. I like to go up looking for that in some locales like in North Dakota. That’s where this photo mission was accomplished with the beautiful Monocoupe 110. I sent the Monocoupe lower to almost 750AGL and zoomed the lens out. I wanted to take in visually more of Earth while keeping the image size you see. It’s a simple technique you can use anytime of year, one I like to use, looking for the other fall colors.

In the launching and recovery of an amphibious aircraft, they have to get on step. In the simplest of terms, they need to have a minimum amount of the float dragging in the water. They do this when taking off and they do it after landing and “taxing” to where they want to beach. It’s these two times you can get this kinda shot. Now you’re shooting at a slower shutter speed to get the prop blur. The problem is the plane is “skipping” across the surface, so along with the prop blur, you can get plenty of fuselage blur as well. But that’s the challenge and fun of coming and going!

Shooting up on this Sea Fury, you can’t see the kangaroo emblem on the side of the fuselage. Take a guess at what country paints a kangaroo on their fuselage? Now look at the photograph. Could the Sea Fury be flying in those skies? Of course, because clouds are universal. You have no clue it was actually flying over the skies of California’s Central Valley. When you need to tell their story accurately but the earth below isn’t it, head to the clouds. Cause that can be anywhere in the world.