Another cool day at work. Part II

A few weeks ago, I told a story about my fun shoot that included a flight in a 1929 Stearman biplane to photograph aerials of an architectural project. I thought it would be good to talk a little bit about the technique that was employed.

The Conditions
I was working in an open cockpit and the pilot was in a cockpit right behind me. Any equipment that wasn't clipped in or tied down could have the potential of flying out and hitting the the pilot. I chose to shoot with a Canon 5D mkII and 24-105mm lens, which I could really only use about 50-105mm of range. One parameter was the angle of view that I could shoot through. As you can see in the photo below, I was positioned right in the middle of the bi-wings . This forced me to turn around and essentially shoot backwards, which was difficult due to the deep cockpit and the harness.

I could open up to about 50mm before catching the wing on the right of my frame and the tail on the left.

Settings
When determining my settings, I knew I needed a high shutter speed because I was shooting a moving subject. Since the subject was so far away, I could set my focus at near infinity and shoot with a bigger aperture. Shooting shutter priority at f5.6, my shutter speed resulted in about 1/1200 sec at ISO 200. This would be plenty to stop motion and get a clear shot.


Other Stuff
As I mentioned earlier, I had to shoot behind me. This was tricky because I was held in by my harness that made me feel quite secure in that open cockpit. The problem was, I couldn't turn around to shoot with the harness tight. After making a few flyovers, I began to feel comfortable with Tom's flying. I decided to loosen up the harness a bit and slide the right arm strap off so I could get turned around to shoot. Since we were doing flyovers, I only needed to shoot off short bursts and then slide back down in my seat and harness.

Communication with the pilot is fairly paramount. Its always good to use landmarks when providing instructions on where to fly instead of just saying "go a little wider" or "fly up a bit". Landmarks give the pilot more definitive objects to fly towards or over.

Other than that, try to get a little more time up high so you can shoot some personal photos that you can use for other stuff. ...and just have fun!