Horizontal Composition

Seeing what’s there and taking advantage of it is an element of photography that comes quite automatically. Suiting composition to the things one encounters is part of the art, and I found from the outset that using an automatic camera liberated me from the mechanics of photography itself and allowed me to concentrate on composition as never before. This is the river frontage at Goolwa, South Australia, looking west to the Hindmarsh Island bridge, captured on October 21^st, 2019. The weather was obviously very fare, that cloudless sky really contrasting with the spectacular, broody Southern Ocean skies one often finds down there on the coast. The framing was simple and the lines of the bridge, the water horizon and the structures in the foreground made a series of more or less parallel horizontal lines that demanded a wide composition. Emphasising the width of the material is as simple as cropping top and bottom, and I’ve included the second version. It’s your choice which you prefer! Minor adjustments to contrast, colour and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Almost Air-to-Air

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The marvelous thing about shooting low-flying aircraft is that if you manage to exclude any background details, buildings, trees, you can develop an image which the eye has a hard time telling from a low angle aerial perspective. This is the Aero Delphin, a jet trainer built in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, photographed at the Goolwa Classic Airshow, February, 2007, south of Adelaide. The shot had plenty of telephoto factored in to create the illusion of closer proximity, and extraneous sky background was cropped to enlarge the aircraft in the frame further. The fast shutter speed of the bright conditions stopped the action, and I managed to hold the camera sufficiently steady to have an acceptable rotational angle without messing with it. Enhancements were the usual sharpness, contrast and colour. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic, telephoto. Image by Mike.

Catch the Flash

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Reflex shooting can give unpredictable results, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Here a Robinson R-22 helicopter is framed quite well, at a high telephoto value, as it passes obliquely, at the Goolwa Classic Airshow, February, 2007, south of Adelaide, South Australia. The short exposure time has stopped the blades and the timing of the shutter has also captured the strobing of the beacon on the aircraft's tail boom. The general grain of the image is an artifact of the telephoto setting, and the fact it was taken at only 2mp, a way of getting a large number of frames onto a flashcard in the days before really big cards started to become affordable. Sharpened and colour-enhanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Extreme Distortion

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This is the most extreme example of heat distortion I've yet photographed. My post "Unintentionally Artistic" looked at catching a stem of grass correctly in focus as a consequence of the chip being unable to focus on the heat-distorted aircraft in the background; this is the same aircraft, a T-28 Trojan flown by Wayne Pearce at the Goolwa Classic Airshow, February, 2007, heading in the opposite direction, further away and 100% masked by the heat haze rising from the runway. The photograph was taken at high telephoto, thus the distortion becomes the entire image. Colour-enhanced and contrast-balanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic, telephoto. Image by Mike.

Characterising the Action

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This is a less-precise variation on "personalising the hardware," almost a crowd-scene, though the image tells a story. The sign on the truck sets the scene, the people are the personification of what's happening and the helicopter, stopped in flight overhead, is the "noun" of the narrative in the sense that it is the object, and the "verb" in the sense that flight is the action. This was one of a batch of similar shots taken at the Goolwa Classic Airshow, February, 2007, in which the close proximity of people and aircraft made for many interesting action shots. Trying to shoot aircraft devoid of passers-by is a skill all by itself, but when you combine them deliberately some engaging compositions result. Sharpened, and colour- and contrast-balanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Precision Flying

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This is a high telephoto shot, and the lack of image resolution is at least partly due to that. But the shutter speed is very high, stopping the vortex of the smoke trail to show each prop-beat eddy perfectly. This is Chris Sperou, Australia's all-time aerobatic champion, in his trademark Pitts biplane, and Warren Stewart in the Beech B33, flying their super-close manoeuvres at the Goolwa Classic Airshow, in South Australia, February 2007. The shot was cropped close from a larger frame area before sizing for publication. The image was sharpened and contrast-enhanced very slightly. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic, telephoto. Image by Mike.

Personalising the Hardware

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Hardware, machines of any kind, are always interesting textural and light-effects subjects, or of interest for their own sake, but to personalise the image creates another dimension. People depicted in promotional illustration or photography compliment the product by depicting desirable lifestyle, and this is the same mechanism at work. Here the telephoto medium close-up on this D.H. 82 Tiger Mother, at the Goolwa Classic Airshow, in February 2007, has the dimension of personalisation due to capturing the passenger looking toward the camera, creating an emotional exchange in which the viewer participates in the image. Photographically it was not a difficult shot, simply a composition which sought a close angle on subject matter which was being well-documented from all perspectives. The image was sharpened and balanced, and fine rotation was used to help to square up the horizon line, correcting the tendancy to rotate the camera to the right with the shutter release. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic, telephoto. Image by Mike.

Unintentionally Artistic

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When you're shooting on the fly you can only take advantage of what happens in front of you and see what comes out later, and sometimes the results are surprising, things the eye did not register at the time. This is an old T-28 Trojan trainer, flown by Wayne Pearce, at the Goolwa Classic Airshow, February, 2007, an aircraft I captured in many studies. The conditions were bright sunshine (exposure time is short enough to stop the prop) and a strong, buffetting wind, and by afternoon a lot of heat was reflecting from the landing strip, creating the heat haze seen here. I was tracking with the aircraft on landing, at maximum telephoto, and it seems the heat haze meant the sonic focussing beam could not find the subject. But it did find the strands of grass blowing in the foreground, generating an image that suggests I focussed deliberately on the grass to let the subject matter blur artistically. This is serendipity, I certainly couldn't have made it happen! Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic, telephoto. Colour- and contrast-balanced. Image by Mike.

Ephemeral Subject

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Some subjects are there and gone in moments, and you need to anticipate their appearance to catch them on film (or in pixels). Fast-moving subjects fall in this category, and when an aerobatic plane trails smoke it makes pictures in the sky which have the beauty of the physics of fluid mechanics. Here I'm photographing the aerobatic display by the Extra 300s type, flown by Paul Andronicou at the Goolwa Classic Airshow, February, 2007, and while the aircraft itself is the subject matter it becomes visually conjoined with its smoke trail, so the corporate effect is the sense of motion the audience receives. In this sense, the smoke is as important as the aircraft in the aesthetic effect they generate, and the photographer must mot try to zoom solely on the aircraft and track its motion to the exclusion of all else -- it's not possible, for one thing, and you miss the visual suggestion of motion in the smoke if you do. This image was cropped to achieve composition, and sharpness and colour were enhanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, image by Mike.

Panning with a Moving Subject

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Sometimes the results of a shoot can be surprising. The Goolwa Classic Air Show 2007 was my first time shooting a flying display digitally rather than with the trusty Pentax K1000s and the manual zoom lens, and I was very pleased with the range of effects and benefits that came through. Here I'm panning with the takeoff roll of the restored WWII-vintage Russian Yak-9  fighter, flown by Jim Wickham, managing somehow to keep the horizon level (I think the camera was balanced on top of a fence post) and tracking left to right with the subject at high zoom. Oddly enough, though the shutter speed was fast enough to almost stop the prop, the background is attractively streaked while the subject is sharp and clear. I was not using sport mode, but the day cleared out to bright sunshine (and a buffetting wind) and the chip made great use of the faster available speed range. The image was sharpened only. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic, telephoto. Image by Mike.