buzzard bait

Back to an earlier comment about cross-controlling. There is no question that the pilots at Old Warden, flying WWI and 1920s era planes, used cross-controlling on almost every pass in order to show an angled view of the top of the plane to the crowd while still flying by, and not into, the crowd. They do look pretty that way. It would be good practice for model pilots and ought to result in good shots.

Tango Juliet

Wow! The aerial Cub shot is fantastic. Great work guys, keep it up. I went to Joe Nall and used a ladder to get up over the heads of most other photogs (SKS had their photogs stepladders there for the same reason). Unfortunately, there were advertising banners along the trees opposite the pilot stations that were hard to avoid on low passes. From experience, a low figure 8 works pretty well if your lens is long enough. My 75-300 is really 120-480 on my camera. If you don't shoot a fast shutter speed though, you'll get blurry shots from camera shake, yet it's still slow enough to blur model props. Just remember to slow down the shutter for fullsize aircraft whose props turn slower so you get good prop blur (something I forgot to do at Joe Nall... )

abufletcher

I've never done the step-ladder thing because I figure if there are other photographers around I must not have found an interesting enough position (or time to be shooting). Twenty photographers all shooting from the same location with approximately the same equipment is not my idea of fun.

Tango Juliet

At Joe Nall, it's not just other photogs, it's people, period. There are just so many people there, you have to get up and over them to get a shot. Ideally, I'd rather have the type of ladder SKS was useing, but a 4 foot step ladder was all I had available to me at the time.

abufletcher

I just meant to be saying that photographing staged events isn't my thing. And if there's anything like a rule in photojournalism it's this: If you're standing with the crowd of onlookers, you're not doing your job.