I do have thousands of images from the various air-shows. I not always have time even to sort through them before next air-show happens in the season. I typically just post one or two the most memorable images shortly after the show.

I decided to have a day on the blog for those images. It will force me to go through those catalogs more often (these are only images I do not store in my main, single Lightroom catalog). I will have to spend time weekly browse them, reject those not meeting quality criteria (sharpness, cut off elements) and chose some more picks, which would otherwise get forgotten.

Today’s image is from the warbirds performance. They have a good showing at Oshkosh AirVenture, so seeing so many of them in the air at the same time is quite impressive. This is when you need wide angle lens in the air show photography. But right after that, you will want to zoom in on the
details and show the precision of the formation in your image.

It is even more difficult to produce an evocative image when the weather doesn’t cooperate. It is nice when there is a few dramatic clouds in the sky. But in reality, it is either clear or totally covered sky.

What saved this image is the smoke trail behind Lucas Oil Aviat, piloted by Michael Wiksus. It shows you where the airplane was just seconds ago and how he got into the place it is now. You can imaging what happened, and it tells you the story of the air show pilot and his show.

For once, although it is my favorite image from sea base, I am not the one who took it. It was Tomasz, exploring sea base last year, when he went to the AirVenture by himself, and I was stuck back in Poland. Secondly, it is rather difficult to take a clean image of an airplane anywhere during AirVenture, or any air show for that matter. There are people, pilots, other airplanes and stuff, everywhere.

Yet, I am just coming back to this image. The red and white frame make this aircraft stand out from almost any background. Contrast it with the green surface of the lake, and add some reflection in the water, and it just have this look. I would be almost willing to crop it so nothing else is there, just the surface of the bay.

I took this photograph last year in the seabase on Lake Winnebago. In my opinion, it perfectly shows the relation of the seaplane to both water and air. It is still airborne, although at the point of the landing where there is no return into the flight any more. And yet it is still not touching the water. It is suspended in between. I even cropped it in the way accenting it, giving the same weight to both water and sky in the image, putting the line of the horizon in the center.

The problem is availability of those subjects. I have an occasion to photograph air shows no more then a couple times a year, and add few events in the aeroclub, and that’s it. I photograph flowers probably equally often. Where I live, there are no public gardens with flowers, just grass and trees everywhere and no botanic garden within 70 miles. Cut flowers are expensive and well, short lived. I gave myself a bit more occasions this year by planting some wild flowers around the house. It is still not a subject to photograph all year long. And I would like to pick my camera and just photograph something every other day!

Thus, I sometimes struggle to find subject. There is really not much to go outside for right now. Maybe, when the snow finally comes. For now, it is just yellow-brown everywhere and nothing to draw the eye on Iowa prairies and fields. That’s why in winter I tend to photograph more food. Staying in the house and cook something to photograph seems like the best option. If I only liked cooking…

How about you? Do you struggle to find subjects to photograph in the winter, when the weather doesn’t cooperate? How do you find subjects to shoot just to have a camera in your hands and not loose “the touch”?

Sabrina Henry posted yesterday on her “Chronicles of Learning Photography” a very interesting thoughts on black and white images, and why black and white images are in a sene natural to her. I myself was photographing a bleak and white film rangefinder in my early photography days, and was rised in a sense when the color photography just entered the scene. And yet, the color is what draws me to many scenes, I react to contrasting colors quicker then to interesting patterns or compositional lines. The black and white is afterthought, as Sabrina mentioned- if the color is not adding to the image, get rid of it. And this is what happened with the image in today’s post. I was working on it yesterday morning, and when I finished tone mapping, I was not happy with it at all. After reading Sabrina’s post, I knew it needs to get converted into black and white. This is the image, where color is in a way. Yes, the rust has a very pleasing tone, but it contrasts with te blue windows, which in fact take away from the important parts of the photograph. And the grain, coming from bracketed shots in not really well lit looks more natural in black and white, and is only a nuisance in color picture.

I photographically prefer bright colored airplanes, well distinguishing themselves from the sky. The red and yellow are my favorites. No wonder I was ready to photograph this Grumman Ag Cat when I saw him. I am not Moose Petersen, I cannot tell captivating stories about airplanes. They are for me just interesting subjects, I am drawn to them visually. It is far more important for me that that is a contrast between the machine and blue sky, which would work in black and white as well (I checked :)). And to position airplane in the frame to create dynamic image. Make sure the props “are moving”. And there is some detail in the sky…