After the ISAP convention last weekend, Jake & I had to drive home. We decided to get up early and spend a couple hours at the Wings over Gillesipe air show. We had seen a sneak preview of it a couple days earlier and the warbirds that had flown in early got our attention. So we got over to the show before its scheduled opening hoping that would let some early birds and sure enough, they were. Early was 08:45 on a clear sky day so the light was already a little hot but we made the most of it. It was simply fun!
In these situations, when the light is not great, background never clean, what do I go for? In all seriousness, I simply click for the fun of it. If it weren’t for the blog, you wouldn’t ever see these types of photographs. All three of these planes were new to me in one way or the other. The Skyraider above had a different set of arms and color scheme then I have in my files. The An-2 I’ve never seen out of a museum and never Yellow. And the Flying Barrel, this fighter has always intrigued me and again I’d never seen it outside a museum. So why take these photos in this less then perfect conditions?
When you’re building up a file or as I think of it “inventory” of images, you start out at the bottom and work to improve that file. Be it a bird, mammal, location or particular aircraft, while certain general techniques all work the same on them, there will always be little nuances, adjustments you need to make for the individual uniqueness. I don’t wanna wait until crunch time to figure those things out. So I take these photos to learn from, not to put out as examples of good photography. What did I learn? An example would be the shadow of the wing on the fuselage of the Flying Barrel, it’s pretty big, hides a whole lot. If I have the opportunity to do and air to air with it, this would be a real issue. How to deal with that shadow? Flash fill of course. No, just kidding! The shadow comes from the angle of the light, change that angle and you change the shadow. I wanna know about such issues so when presented with the golden opportunity, I can be golden.
Photos captured by D3x, 200-400VR2 on Lexar UDMA digital film