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The Frog in Your Hand

November 06, 2022 - My cover story for the September 2022 issue of ROTOR magazine is about manufacturing helicopter rotor blades. The premis...
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Background Players

August 05, 2022 - I have noted, several times in previous articles, that photographing people at work is a satisfying endeavor and the res...
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Opening Wide

June 14, 2022 - Journalists live by six key questions when examining a subject or event: who, what, when, where, why, & how. (Apparently...
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Up up up

June 01, 2022 - When you, as photographer, are planted on the ground while your quarry is in the air, one of the most dynamic images you...
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The Long and Short of It

December 26, 2021 - My previous article, and even the one before that, extolls the virtues of wide-angle lenses for capturing images that ca...
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Move Close and Say Aaah

October 26, 2021 - My previous article was about photographing mosquito control helicopters in Florida. My current efforts have me crisscro...
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Shoot Small to Make Big

September 05, 2021 - I recently spent a week driving across much of the state of Florida in order to fly with a passel of governmental mosqui...
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The Magical, Mystical, Full-Rotor-Disk Shot

July 01, 2021 - One of the toughest shots to make in air-to-air photography, when the subject is an airplane with propellers, or a helic...
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Into the Woods

June 16, 2021 - In my article Looking Up, the topic was ground-to-air photography and the location was Las Vegas; the aircraft was a Kam...
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Where's The Horizon?

April 28, 2021 - Landscape photography is often concerned with placement of the horizon in a composition. Aerospace photography might not...
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Front and Center

February 07, 2021 - A common approach to composition, especially among less-experienced photographers, is to place the subject in the middle...
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Keeping Your Distance

December 27, 2020 - In this time of pandemic, with its new challenges and expectations, there are stories to tell not just about keeping our...
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Reflecting gnitcelfeR

November 01, 2020 - Reflections are one way of seeing things differently, and when someone sees something differently, they want to see more...
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Complete Coverage

October 09, 2020 - Telluride, Colorado. Beautiful scenery up in the mountains, yes, but when it comes to helicopter flying, the density alt...
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Capturing A Bumblebee

August 05, 2020 - My recent article A Lot In A Little presented the wide range of images I captured during a single air-to-air mission. In...
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A Lot In A Little

June 24, 2020 - When you are "burning dinosaur bones," as Chris Cornell put it, efficiency is important. The direct operating costs of a...
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Looking at Bones

May 18, 2020 - Over the past 15 years, I have spent many days with the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group on Davis-Mont...
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Looking Up

March 24, 2020 - I have photographed one model of helicopter over the years that few people have seen, far fewer have piloted, and only a...
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Going in Circles

December 31, 2019 - I was recently in the Gulf of Mexico for a week of photography and story-gathering. One of the photo shoots was mostly a...
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Making a Masterpiece

December 07, 2019 - A short story that illustrates how thinking ahead and showing your work can help you and your client when the time is su...
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Showing Less to Engage More

November 19, 2019 - When a photographer presses the shutter release, they are making myriad decisions how to capture the scene before them....
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Looking Forward To It

October 14, 2019 - Beginning last year (which would make it 2018), I have been photographing from inside helicopters looking forward throug...
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No Gyro? No Problem.

August 13, 2019 - How do you get 1,200 sharp air-to-air images? Apparently, you press the shutter button 2,535 times then, back in your ho...
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Balling It Up

August 02, 2019 - There's a category of helicopter operations called human external cargo in which a human, or humans, are carried in a so...
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Calendrically Shot

July 12, 2019 - For many in business, wall calendars have lost their value as scheduling tools — a working professional’s daily schedule...
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Motion in the Movies

May 31, 2019 - One of the strongest arguments for using video is signalled in another, more descriptive, term for the medium: motion pi...
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Skew Not The Scenery

May 15, 2019 - Among the several challenges you face when photographing the interior of an aircraft is the small space. Not much room f...
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For Whom the Sun Sets

April 16, 2019 - There is oft-given advice that a photographer should have the sun behind them, streaming in over their shoulder and smas...
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Putting the Muse in Museum

March 29, 2019 - Whether for business or pleasure, museums and other densely packed collections of aircraft present not only a target-ric...
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Double-Trucking

March 18, 2019 - In " Rigged to Jiggle," my article about mounting a camera inside a single-seat helicopter to capture a behind-the-scene...
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Rigged to Jiggle

February 19, 2019 - On a trip to Puerto Rico to photograph a specific type of helicopter for a trade publication, one of the shots I wanted...
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Slow Shooter

January 30, 2019 - Aviation is inherently moving. The machines, the people, even the backgrounds, seem destined to be seen in motion. Effec...
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ExPositioning

January 18, 2019 - Photographing a trade show would seem a turkey shoot, with lots of targets in a small space, but it poses many challenge...
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You Put It Where?!

January 02, 2019 - The best view, meaning eye-catching and communicative, is often not the obvious one. Not the "standard" one, the one tha...
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Shooting in the Dark

October 15, 2018 - Sometimes the situation for photography turns dark. And I don't mean menacing or sad. Sometimes the light goes away or h...
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But It's Just Sitting There!

October 04, 2018 - I recently finished a nine-day journey through the western U.S. capturing images for an upcoming trade journal photo ess...
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We Can Fly Because They Care

July 31, 2018 - Recently I put the spotlight on the airborne crewmembers not operating the aircraft. This time I take a look at ground c...
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Playing with Crayons

July 18, 2018 - A couple of articles ago I showed a "before, during, and after" series of my taking a blah photo and making it work with...
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The Folks Not Flying the Ship

June 29, 2018 - It is common when flying a photography mission in public safety/emergency medical aircraft for the full complement of cr...
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Turning Yuck into Yeah!

June 18, 2018 - I came back from an air-to-air photo shoot with plenty of good images, but one image didn't look so hot. What it looked...
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Blurring For Focus

August 21, 2017 - One of the opportunities I often take advantage of when photographing helicopters is to compose them against a backgroun...
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Cover Photo? No, Maybe, Done.

July 31, 2017 - In the world of aerospace marketing, air-to-air images are often the default for magazine covers. Providing those images...
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Inside Out

June 20, 2017 - When you're photographing from a helicopter, the standard approach is to exclude any element of the aircraft, to capture...
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Diangularity

May 15, 2017 - Composing a photograph for commercial purposes is balancing the needs of multiple audiences across a range of media. Eve...
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Shooting the Show

March 15, 2017 - Heli-Expo 2017 was marked by a sense of enthusiasm and optimism that has been building for a couple of years. There was...
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All Spun Up and No Place to Go

March 03, 2017 - In this follow-up to my most recent article — about getting good images of a flying aircraft when you and your camera ar...
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From the Ground Up…or Down

February 24, 2017 - I shot the above image from the ground. The client wanted to sell this helicopter and, rather than pay for a full air-to...
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Is It Coverworthy? Part 2

February 06, 2017 - In this follow-up I share additional guidance from the people who decide what shows and what blows on a magazine's cover...
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What to do About the Weather

November 03, 2016 - Thunderstorms rolled through the area last night and it got me to thinking. For pilots concerned about safety and comple...
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Photons In, iPhone Out

October 11, 2016 - I observed, once, that "the ideal helicopter air-to-air photo platform includes a large flat space in the cabin with the...
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Double Ugly? Not.

October 11, 2016 - I was at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, the week of September 12 through 16, 2016, photographing some of the US Ai...
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Shooting for Scale

October 10, 2016 - With the coming of spring to south-central Arizona the hot weather moves in, the winter visitors move out, and the annua...
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Beautiful Busy Background

October 10, 2016 - Even if you're not a fan of alliteration, these images show the beauty and value of an appropriately busy background, wh...
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Near and Far

October 05, 2016 - I'm working on a project photographing the Arizona Department of Public Safety aviation units — it's a diverse set of mi...
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Planning for Variety

October 05, 2016 - Here are three images from a 2016 air-to-air photo shoot to illustrate something you should be doing, or expecting of yo...
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Here's a Tip: Tilt!

October 05, 2016 - If you've tried it, you'll understand the challenges of photographing flying aircraft from the ground: being on the grou...
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What's Wrong With This Picture (Think Fast!)

October 05, 2016 - This first image was posted to Wikipedia (not my photograph, I'll point out) and shows, very clearly, a Eurocopter (now...
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Back and For(e)th

October 04, 2016 - Looking beyond the target or, sometimes, in front of it. When photographing aircraft, especially air-to-air, it is impor...
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The Eyes ARE the Focus

October 04, 2016 - I was photographing equipment and soldiers on Fort Hood, Texas, when I came upon a crew working on the rotor blades of a...
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