planeandpilotmag.com 53and no one wants to see a shot of
a plane with a dozen other people
milling about in their khaki shorts
and wide-brimmed hats, blocking
the view and stealing focus, liter-
ally and otherwise. Luckily, there
are a few solutions, none ideal,
but all workable.
First, get out of bed! If you rise early and go photo
hunting just after dawn, not only will you be rewarded
with great light, but also the usual throngs of airshow
goers will be nowhere to be seen.
You can also practice patience. Frame up the shot and
wait for the scene to clear. Many of my shots of airplanes
apparently sitting by themselves on the ramp were ones
I snapped off in the half-second gaps between airshow
goers wandering by in front of my lens.
Last, focus on a particularly interesting detail, per-
haps the one that makes the plane so noteworthy, like
the exhaust stacks of a Merlin V-12 on a P-51 or the rivet
lines on a Spartan Executive. Logos, reflections, spinners,
door hardware, interesting tail shapes are all among the
endless detail possibilities if the crowds are too great to
get a shot of the entire airplane.
- YOU PUT IT IN THE CENTER
OF THE FRAME.
A photograph is only partly about the subject. How the
subject, in this case, an airplane, is placed in the frame
matters. So does context.
Is the plane you’re shooting at an airshow, or is it zoom-
ing through a narrow Swiss valley? Think about it. A little
context can sometimes make a good photograph great.
Think, too, about how you place the plane in the frame.
You might have heard of the Rule of Thirds in photog-
raphy, where good composition divides the frame into
thirds and places elements of the shot in each third. The
theory is vague and overly simplistic, in my opinion, and
it doesn’t apply well to airplanes in general, but thinking
about it will help in two ways. First, you’ll think twice
about putting the plane dab in the middle of the frame,
and, second, you’ll at least begin to think about including
ABOVE: Keeping visual interest in a
plane in flight can be hard. Here's an
example of a successful strategy, finding
a better angle, in this case, on approach
to land captured from a frontal angle.
RIGHT: Eliminating distracting elements
is tough, but it's not impossible. Here, the
photographer blurs the background into
oblivion with the use of a short depth of
field. Great shot. Plus, can you find the
photographer in the reflection of the
spinner? We can't either!