Saturday wasn’t the only day of shooting out of the back of a sky van, Sunday proved to be just as much fun, with a twist. The B17 and P51’s were a classic WWII shoot that was spectacular. Sunday was a mismatch of different aircraft, totally in 5 different planes that we got to photograph. It started out with this one, the A36 Bonanza which is one of the best shooting platforms for aviation work and amusingly enough belonged to one of the participants. The pilot for the craft was Casey, same guy that flew Cripes’a’Mighty the P51 the day before. Mom was also in the Bonanza photographing us in the sky van. It was crossfire shooting!
Each plane in separate waves except for the last two which i’l be talking about tomorrow. Next up after the A36 was the RV8, kind of a sporty looking plane but with classic fighter paint job. It didn’t even realize that there were two people in the plane until i looked at the images on the computer. Can’t believe they were able to cram two people into that little thing. The big thing that i noticed throughout the entire shoot, both days, was the light. As we were making the left turn orbit the light constantly shifted lighting up different sides of the aircraft. Everything from back lit, to front lit, to side light, both sides, were happening. The pilots afterward said the best time for the photographers was the worst time for them; staring right into the sun.
The RV8’s are good examples of this fact. The one top one is back lit and the bottom one is top coming out of being front lit. I like both shots it shows what the pilots had to go through and it just creates more variety. At times i would switch exposure comp to try and help a little but it got the point where it was hard to keep up and i was ultimately missing shots.
The third guy up was the Steerman, also known as the Red Baron. There were two Steerman’s in the hangers at CAF a yellow one and the Baron. Out of the two i have to say that the Baron was much more appealing. The red just glimmered.
The Red Baron is definitely one of my favorites form the shoot, from the angles, to the way the light shinned on it, to the background that popped out so well with the plane. It all just came together. Now as i said earlier there are two more planes that we photographed in that shoot, but you’ll have to wait till tomorrow to find out who they are.
Images captured with D3, AF-S Nikkor 70-200 VRII, on Lexar UDMA Digital Film