When the Short Sunderland was in the hangar, it just didn’t grab my imagination but once I saw it outside and with nothing around it, I couldn’t leave it. Sadly, the gorgeous light could and did as the morning worn on. That’s still one problem I’ve never found a solution to, making the great light stick around as long as I need it. While the great light disappeared, the great subject that was rarely outside didn’t. At the same time, we had total access to the Sunderland which as John Q Public visiting the museum you do not. So just walking off just because the sun gave up on us simply wasn’t an option. I don’t think I’ll have this opportunity again. Time to go to work!
How do you work a subject that’s so much taller then you? You can of course take the one shot showing it’s much taller then you but that one shot kind of is a dead end at times, there’s really not a ton of ways of expressing that. Keep in mind it’s a one of a kind aircraft at this point in history and a one of a kind opportunity. You might ask yourself what’s the one angle one can’t normally get and can you get it? I had a mentor long ago Reg who told me the secret to his success as a photographer was always to find an angle that no one else did.
Lucky for me my bud Dave was with us this weekend. He was working with the P-51C for a upcoming book and wanted to go high. I told him they had a cherry picker, go ask if he could use it. Next thing I knew there was a 12′ ladder in front of the Mustang with all the folks from the workshop in line to shoot from it. When they were done, Dave said, “Hey Moose, wanna shoot the Sunderland?”
Up the ladder I went and the higher I got, the better it got. Now let’s just look at this for a moment. We have a white subject in hard light….let that soak in for a moment, a white subject in hard light. We wanna make a once in a lifetime photo of a once in a lifetime opportunity, how do we do that with a white subject in hard light? I use the KISS theorem all the time, how does it apply here? Real simple, white subject in hard light, by exposing for it (which the Nikon Matrix is going to do), what happens to the sky? Yeah, it goes dark, a nice dark blue. What does dark blue do to the subject? Makes it fly off the page! Just the sheer color contrast between the white and blue are a natural in hard light. After that, it was a matter of finding the character in the “face” of the plane to make the image. I just love the bottom vertical. It just makes me smile!
Photo captured by D3x, 24-120VR (with 12′ ladder held by Dave) on Lexar UDMA digital film