[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/_bmp2452.swf, 585, 473 [/swf]
While this is obvious, it’s really not. The 1st thing you have to do is find the pilots and the planes. Now it all depends on what’s your pleasure, vintage war planes, modern military jets, commercial or private aviation, whatever it is, you’ve gotta find two pilots and two planes to do air to air work. There are actually a lot of these folks around the country, just do a search on warbird flights and you’ll find a whole bunch. When you start out, I’ll pass along the words of advice I was given, bring your check book. A 15min flight goes $400-500 for ONE plane. That probably just stopped most from trying this but you will find that after you’ve made the first contact and made the first flight and paid that first bill, in exchange for prints (which you sent from your first flight), you can put the checkbook away. The pilots/owners are really great folks and love great photography of their planes.
I happened to luck out (that often happens) to have hooked up with the right pilot from the start. Dennis (on the right) besides being a really nice guy and great pilot, knows it seems just about everyone aviation. Ted, the owner and pilot of the P-51D Sizzlin Liz was more than happy to go flying to get some great images of his plane. You might have noticed in more air to air photography you see the pilot in the plane looking right into the lens. What they are doing is not smiling for the camera but watching the other plane as we fly in formation. So before we go up, we sat down at a table, we talked about what I wanted, where we’d be going, how many passes we’d make in each locale, all those logistics to make the photo. You will know you’ve got the right pilots at the briefing, if they are the right ones, they will take your ideas and make them better. Then, all it takes is getting up in the air.
Photo captured by D3s, 70-200VRII on Lexar UDMA digital film