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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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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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Shootin' Steady
April 04, 2021 - The number one challenge in making great images during air-to-air photography is stability of the camera during that spl...
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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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Working Those Pixels
January 17, 2021 - It is true that photos are made, not just taken. Pressing the shutter button is the beginning, and a very important begi...
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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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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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Framed
July 14, 2020 - I am, as I write this, deep into producing a photo essay for a trade magazine about firefighting helicopters in Arizona.
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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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Picturing History
June 10, 2020 - In my years as an aerospace photographer, and as the son of a USAF fighter pilot and as just a plain ol' guy who likes 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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Fascinating Faces
May 01, 2020 - I am producing a series of books, with a very limited distribution, on aerospace photography. They are heavy on example...
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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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Killing Color
November 06, 2019 - I'm planning a marketing video for a client and have decided to create it in black-and-white, rather than full color. Th...
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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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Up. Down. All Around.
September 17, 2019 - What do you get when you put a photographer — especially an aviation photographer — at or near an airport with a camera...
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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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Show Different
June 18, 2019 - I am not an avid air show shooter, one of those many, many fine photographers who capture the aircraft that ply the skie...
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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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Why Engines?
May 02, 2019 - Over my years of aerospace photography I've noticed that my eye, and camera, often turns to engines. I wonder why that i...
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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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Piecing Together the Past
December 14, 2018 - It was December 21, 2016, that the USAF retired its final F-4 Phantom II from service. I was covering the event for a ma...
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How Much is Enough?
December 04, 2018 - I was standing outside the fences southeast of Naval Air Facility El Centro, conversing with friends, enjoying the mild...
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The Sky's (Not) The Limit
November 19, 2018 - When the aircraft looks good but the sky looks like nothing, it's not likely you can wait for the ether to improve. If t...
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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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Them Looking at You Looking at Them
September 07, 2018 - In a recent posting the topic was people working. Caught in the act of doing their jobs, and how photography captures th...
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The People Manning the Unmanned Vehicles
August 14, 2018 - Except for very specialized vehicles and missions, unmanned means only that a man, or woman, is not on board, and a phot...
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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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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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Going Wide
July 18, 2017 - Photographers have a plethora of tools they can bring to bear in creating images to support their clients. A photographe...
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On The Line
June 29, 2017 - Some of my favorite photography is when I get to capture people working on the flight line. They are alternately serious...
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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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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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Looking Inside HDR
January 15, 2017 - In 2015 I showed an example of what is called high dynamic range, or HDR, photography. My example was the Boeing 747 tha...
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So, Why Does JPEG Suck?
December 16, 2016 - In a recent article I briefly mentioned (well, it was a parenthetical part of the title) that JPEG sucks. I showed an ex...
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Focus, Focus, Where's the Focus?
December 09, 2016 - When photographing for a story in a major magazine I use many approaches in my compositions and camera settings. Here I'...
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Adding Up the Pixels (plus, JPEG sucks!)
November 19, 2016 - We'll start with a simple bit of mathematics (hang in there — the key word is simple):
20 x 12 x 100 = 24,000.
That's...
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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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Making Heat Look Hot
October 11, 2016 - Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport is situated 22 miles east-southeast of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport as the crow...
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Looking Down When You're Up
October 11, 2016 - I've been doing quite a bit of air-to-air work recently, and those images will show up when the time is right, but my mo...
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Blurring One for the Team
October 11, 2016 - I was looking at an earlier posting, which featured examples of busy backgrounds and not-from-the-front lighting, both o...
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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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A Bright Future?
October 04, 2016 - I keep waiting for the day this DC-7 flies again. I understand it made an attempt that was aborted, resulting in some bl...
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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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Making it Cover-Worthy Part 1
October 02, 2015 - Part One
In my article " What's a Photo Worth " I equated the value of a magazine's cover photo to the cost of a full-p...
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Taming Dynamic Range — 7 Becomes 1
July 06, 2015 - I was finishing up a day of photography at the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, on Davis-Monthan AFB,...
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Making it Blurry While Keeping it Sharp
July 03, 2015 - Among aerospace photography subjects, helicopters are more of a challenge than many. Except for images made with intenti...
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