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!

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!