One of the biggest challenges that we face in aviation photography is having to work inside hangers. The hangers are usually dark, theirs clutter, normally exhibits surrounding the planes, so getting a clean shot is difficult. Well the best light source is when the hanger doors are open, and some of the best shots are when the plane is pulled out into the those doors. Down at CAF we had a very nice morning with nice puffy clouds and blue skies. It was a great time to be shooting. We were in the hanger talking with Bob and i noticed this P51 kit plane in the hanger doorway. I had to go play with it.
This plane had an awesome reflection at the time. The floors were polished so the clouds, the sky and light was being reflected. It was kinda cool. Now this plane is not an actual P51 but one from an “advanced” model kit. It was very polished and anything polished makes for good black and whites. I had to play with both. The black and whites turned out well, considering i haven’t done many with planes, but the reflection is lost in this version. I guess I’m torn which is better.
It was one of those subjects that i had to keep shooting, different angles, different looks.
The last one i went a bit wider to include the enitre wing. The only problem with doing that is other planes, and fences and what not start to come in in the background. Whenever i can i keep out that clutter, it just doesn’t add anything to the image. All of these images were taken as single shots, most in vivid but i did play with that too.
Images captured with Nikon D3, 24-70 AF-S f2.8, on Lexar UDMA Digital Film