There we were shooting the gorgeous Spitfire MkIX at sunrise. We had this gorgeous sky that, though bald had a killer glow growing in it. We were in front of the Texas Flying Legends Museum hangar at the Dakota Territory Air Museum on a ramp covered in fresh rain. It was just a great morning. And as always, I was looking around and behind me for other photo opps. That’s when I saw the moisture and light on the F-106 Delta Dart and I knew that was the photograph. So, I grabbed the 24-70VR and took a walk to get the shot. But as soon as it was in the viewfinder, I knew it was all wrong!
Shooting with the 24-70VR, the first thing is I had to get close physical to get the shot. That made the plaque honoring the pilots who flew them in the 5th become a visual eyesore. But more importantly, it makes the nose of the plane visually more important that the wings. The nose “sticks” out and the wings “shrink” in. That’s bad, it totally takes away the F-106 “bad ass” stance. The solution to all these problems was moving way back and take the shot at 400mm. You can see the difference in the two photos. I think about this all the time with all my subjects, in this case even when shooting aircraft air to air. The lens completely changes how you speak about a subject, you need to use that in your visual storytelling. And that’s simply, the long and short of it!