Aviation Photography - Air Shows and Events.
By Harold K. Black
11 Jan 2008
Photographing aircraft on the move, as opposed to Static Portaits, requires a little bit of thought, speed in camera setting adjustments, and decision making on the fly. And a whole lot of luck. Mostly, taking images of aircraft takes place at air shows and other gatherings, and you find yourself among many other photographers, so, how can your images stand out, be different? There are no hard and fast rules, only those that can be bent. Here are some tips for capturing unique images of aircraft on the move.
1) ISO - regardless of the lighting conditions, use ISO 100 so that you are able to use a slow shutter speed - essentially to capture movement. Yahoo for digital cameras and instant gratification.
2) Image Stabilised lenses - switch this feature off for most shots, on for others. You'll get the drift after examining a series of just captured images.
3) Practice the 'follow focus' left to right and right to left pans as an aircraft swoops past, close to the crowd line.
4) Predict the speed - aircraft landings are pretty slow affairs compared to a flypast or a high-speed buzz.
5) Fire a series of shots of one aircraft, change the settings such as shutter speed, and shoot another 5 shots, all from the same positioning. Then compare the results.
6) Crash zooms, fast pans, slow shutter speeds all work to give motion to aircraft images.
7) Position yourself where no man has gone before. Try standing near the threshold of the runway in use and compose accordingly, and shoot with slow shutter speeds.
8) Every photographer will target a fancy plane and fancy flying from where they stand. Be different, move away from the obvious position. The same aircraft image that everyone else is going to take looks the same. Stand on a ladder, hanger roof, in the control tower, whatever. It will be diffenent, and rewarding.
9. Prop driven aircraft pose a challenge. You want the prop shining like a disk in the sun. Slow Shutter speeds! Nothing worse than an prop aircraft frozen in time above a runway.
10. Get close to the action. Yes, use the zoom lens, and don't worry about getting the full aircraft in the frame. One aircraft looks like the next, so zoom in.
There is almost no image errors that can't be fixed in post production. Consider each frame as a possible sale - aircraft owners almost always buy your fames of their aircraft. Heck, even airlines are always on the look out for unique images of their branded aircraft. Consider a image for Large Format Printing and framing.
Aircraft images require bending of the rules - in composition, in execution - be radical in your approach. With a lot of practice you can get your 'hit rate' up to at least 86%, where your images are as different as they can get from the ordinary, boring, yawn, seen-that-one-before aircraft shots. I have learnt these tips over 3 decades of taking aircraft images. Using Digital over the last two years has led to the refinement of this technique because of the Dynamic properties of the digital camera. Have a shot at it, but be a thinking photographer.
