Airshow Pictures Are Finally Online

Last October, the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds were in town and I had the opportunity of attending the first day of the airshow.

The skies were clear, the crowds were heavy, and the Thunderbirds and other aerial demonstrations looked outstanding.

I shot away with my camera and took close to 1,700 photos that day, and now the best of them (about 170 photos) are part of my growing online photo album.  Hooray!

I will say that airshow photography was one of the hardest type of photography that I’ve done with my camera, and that includes dark ride photography in the Florida theme parks.

The aircraft are constantly moving, the lighting conditions change depending on where the aircraft is in relation to the sun, and a lot of people tend to stand in your way.

It’s tough to find that right combination of exposure and shutter speed setting to capture the aircraft as crisp as possible without having excessive noise or it being too dark or too light in the final picture.  And of course, a lot of times you only have one shot at capturing the aircraft from certain angles.  Quite a few of my pictures of propeller engines were shot with such a high shutter speed that the propeller blades look like they’re “frozen”.

All I can say is thank goodness my AA batteries are rechargable and that SD memory sticks are incredibly cheap.  And through the magic of photo editing, my published pictures look better than the original photos.

I love airshows and look forward to improving my techniques to get even better photos in the future.