Polished aircraft are a lot of fun to work with. Compared to aircraft with a fixed paint job throughout, any plane that has a polished aluminum surface naturally glows. It’s pretty obvious why, the metal reflects all light. Sometimes that’s good sometimes it’s bad. It can mean that you get more blown highlights along the surface. It also means that in almost any weather condition the plane is going to stand out. Of course the other benefit of polished is in post it’s really simple to make the aircraft pop. The white and highlight slider is all it takes in ACR.
This particular T6 belongs to a friend down in Phoenix who was kind enough to let us photograph it one morning. It had just rained that morning and we were going out before the storm got worse. Now not every pilot is willing to go out between scwalls but when you work with the best one of the benefits is having that luxury. The rain didn’t hinder our flight and actually made for some great images by making the desert look more vibrant and richer by being wet.
Nikon D3, 70-200 VRII, TC-17e, on Lexar UDMA Digital Film