I know, I know another post about planes. I can’t help it, they’re great subjects to work with and i like talking about them. Well next up on the shooting list that we worked Sunday morning of Air 2 Air was this beautiful T6 Texan. Now over the last couple of years the two of us have photographed many T6’s, one of our good friends even owns a number of them, but never have either us photographed a T6 that was soooo polished before. Even with the patchy light this plane just stood out. It didn’t matter what background we put behind it, the thing just popped!
One of the really interesting facts that we learned while done there at CAF was that originally Falcon Field was a training station during WWII for pilots. That part wasn’t so surprising many strips that were once used for the military have been turned into public areas nowadays. The interesting part was that that particular plane was painted in the same scheme that would’ve been on a T6 if it was stationed at Falcon Field during WWII. Having that knowledge and being able to photograph the T6 over Falcon really made that one awesome shoot.
Now normally when working anything in an air to air shoot there is some play with where the planes go that we photograph. Well Brian, the pilot and owner of the T6, someone who has never done this type of flying before, was so good that if we said over the radio to go 20 meters left or up 10 he would stick it there just like that. It was impressive to see someone get used to flying with a photo platform that quickly. Like before i was in the back of the bus shooting over everyone’s heads and as you can see i was still able to photograph that plane when it was below us. He was just that good.
Images captured with Nikon D3, 70-300 Vr, on Lexar UDMA Digital Film