My friend Dean is an awesome photographer. He has all sorts of camera gear. He has gyrostabilizers, gigantic lenses and auto-focusing, super speed cameras.
If you add to the list all the filters and other secret parts he carries, you can see why his luggage is always overweight. Dean and I started doing air-to-air photography about six years ago.
Luckily for us, we got some pictures in a magazine. With that little success we started seeking out more air-to-air photo shoots.
I say that the first ones were luck. The rest of the photos were hard work. Taking pictures of other airplanes flying next to you takes some special equipment and some skillful piloting. The hardest part is not the flying but getting everyone ready to fly.
Dean calls the start of a photo project “Herding Cats." Photos are interesting in that their composition has to be carefully arranged. In truth, the planes have to be lined up for the correct sun angles; the planes have to line up together correctly; and I’m not sure what Dean is doing in the back seat with all that camera gear.
We take these pictures out of the back seat of a World War II trainer. The back canopy is open and wind is buffeting around. Dean does some little trick to make the wind not affect him so much.
He also sits at a funny angle and wears he seat belt loose around his waist. This makes things interesting because I have to make sure that my movements are smooth with the airplane. It would ruin the day if I threw him out because of some shaky maneuvering. We have got all that down.
The toughest part is getting the pilots together. It sounds like an easy task to get a couple of airplanes up at the same time but it has never worked out that way.
Case in point is three airplanes we had at the same airport. In the two years we had them there, we only got all three in the air twice. The fight was always maintenance, pilot availability and weather. It seemed that no matter what something kept one of the airplanes grounded.
These photo sessions must be briefed so that all the pilots know what they are going to do. That’s where the herding cats come in. Getting all the pilots to stand still and listen to a briefing is hard enough.
Then, it seems that there is always someone that doesn’t have his aircraft fueled. If you put in the changing factor of the sun is always
moving, you have to get everyone in his or her plane and in the air at the right time.
I always add the other variable. Dean wants to ask everyone to fly with us and get his or her picture taken. Right when we get ready to take off, our photographer is off asking someone else to fly.
All the pilots start talking about photographers with the phrase “Herding Cats.”
We just got back from photo shoot. This involved two planes that were basically the same in performance but had some big differences in pilot skills. One pilot flew in the Army but the other had no experience getting close to another airplane.
We solved that problem by getting another pilot to ride along to help form up the group of planes. We got the cat herd together. We took off with the Army pilot and shot that one plane.
Next came the less experienced pilot with another pilot and after some maneuvering we got individual pictures of that plane and then had the first plane rejoin and got pictures that made the cover of a magazine.
The last few years has made me realize what goes into the photos you see in magazines. It is a daunting task. Just for two pictures to be used in a magazine article and a cover, we shot 1,400 photos.
