Combing my passion for landscape photography with my new found interest in aviation, I have recently begun photographing aircraft in flight over beautiful landscapes. The goal of my work is to capture the experience pilots have while flying over the sheer grandeur of the earth. While this gallery currently only contains work from just a handful of shoots, I have several more concepts of aviation photography that I would love to execute in the future and have no plans to leave this series as is.
I wanted to begin this collection with one of my favorite aviation images. The juxtaposition of an aircraft with a specific background element is one of my favorite avenues of aviation photography. I find the challenge of compressing the subject with limited amounts of time so exciting. One of my favorite examples of this was when I planned to align a Carbon Cub aircraft within the full moon rising directly above Mount Hood, Oregon.
This is a single image with zero compositing or blending. All in all, I had 2-3 seconds where all elements were perfectly aligned. With recent wildfires in Oregon, the smoke made this image especially difficult to to capture. To plan this image, I used a program to find out exactly where I would need to be in my plane in order to see the moon rise directly behind the Mountain. From there, we matched flight speeds, made a couple rehearsal flights an hour before moonrise until we had everything dialed.
Just moments after everything aligned and I had the shot, something completely unexpected happened.
By chance, a commercial jet flying near Portland International Airport moved into frame and appeared to fly directly above the summit. I continued to photograph despite the airplane, Mount Hood and rising full moon no longer aligning with each other. In the end, I was much happier with the first image where all elements were aligned as planned.
This was a rough sketch I quickly threw together on my phone while briefing the pilots of my plan before the shoot began.
Thanks to a collective effort between pilots Brody Fry & Christian Walker, we were able to walk away with an image almost identical to what was drawn. I'm beyond thankful for pilot Brody Fry's willingness to join me last minute to be a part of the photoshoot and for my pilot Christian Walker for helping to make this photoshoot yet another success.
AN AERIAL PERSPECTIVE CHANGES EVERYTHING
From high above, landscapes become so much more interesting and dynamic. Patterns that may not have been visible from down below can be seen and appreciated on such a deeper level. Some of my favorite abstract aerial patterns to photograph from an aerial perspective are in the American Southwest. Specifically, Utah.
