Photographing Plane-to-Plane at Sunrise
Lesson 9 from: The Essential Aerial Photography WorkshopChris Burkard
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Photographing Plane-to-Plane at Sunrise
Lesson 9 from: The Essential Aerial Photography WorkshopChris Burkard
Lesson Info
9. Photographing Plane-to-Plane at Sunrise
Lessons
Workshop Introduction
04:42 2Aerial Photography Theory
14:18 3Aerial Composition
18:51 4Route Planning
11:51 5Clothing & Safety Gear
17:18 6Camera Gear
21:49 7Drones
07:15 8Cessna Walkthrough
09:10Lesson Info
Photographing Plane-to-Plane at Sunrise
(ethereal music) (indistinct) Then there's a flock of geese on- (ethereal music continues) Here's one for you, man. Oh yeah, look at the surf. Wow. Man I wanna do a surf report from up here. Seriously, that'd be the sickest surf report ever. (indistinct air control chatter) The waves are pumping right now. Yeah, it's big. Oh shit yeah. Shark report. Yeah. I know you can sees and stuff up here really good. Wow. All right so I'll head down this way, flip around so that you're to the right, heading that way. Cool. Yeah. When we head down, can we be on the left side of the dunes- Yeah let's do it. Perfect. Bush Air Traffic System four-niner six three gull Sydney left down the runway. Two nine. We're now tripping. (ethereal music continues) It's crazy when you realize how much infrastructure is just out here in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of, yeah. You're like, "what the heck?" That must a part of the base or something. I don't know. Such an intere...
sting area. (ethereal music continues) Looks awesome. Yeah we can kinda just circle back and parallel the coast, everybody sweet? Yeah. Yeah what I'll do is... You kind of know what I'm looking for. I think if there's a moment where I'm like "oh just give me a little more" you know, open up a little more. It just means like bank left so that I can kind of get the whole... Yeah. 'Cause it's super nice when you obviously peel away this way and I have a big open space. Yeah. It's always complicated too because so much of what I'm shooting is looking back in the right rear quarters, which is kind of your blind spot. My blind spot. I just envision kinda what you're getting and then from there... There you go. (ethereal music) How's that? That was so crazy. Yeah I'm like shell shocked, it's so funny. You seem all put together, I feel like I've just been staring at my camera, my eyes hurt, everything. Every time up there it feels like a little bit like being at war, you know? Yeah. I mean, that's how I describe 'em like it's a World War II dogfight when you're doing aerial photography you know. It fully is! My stomach's twisted in a knot and I'm staring down this lens and then I'm like, "oh man, I've been looking a little bit too long at my camera" and I start to feel a little sick. It was rad. I think that's the most important part too, is you know, you can't really get the shot if your mind's not in it, you know? And taking those breaks because I mean, I'll get people just on the first flight they're like, "oh, I didn't even know I really get that air sickness" and when you're tunnel visioning like that? And we're banking doing those maneuvers. I had to force myself to close the window, take a second, take a breather, like look ahead. 'Cause you're really just staring either through the view finder or on the screen, it can mess you up, but yeah that was rad, I'm actually so psyched that the weather did what it did 'cause we were trying to fly last night, we got fully fogged in and then it really turned out to be a way better morning. It did. And the light was killer and I think the flight path seemed pretty rad, it worked pretty well. Yeah, it was super easy, and everything happens for a reason right? We got that fog in last night so we came out this morning, it was even more beautiful. It really was. It's like "no you're gonna wanna wait 'til tomorrow, wait till you check this out." I'm stoked. I think I wanna scope back through the images and look at everything, but I feel like we got kind of exactly what we were looking for. We kind of got some shots directly over the dunes, I loved moving out through Montaña de Oro and you could see the sun trickling down through the mountains. Yeah, we got some really killer stuff in Morro but I feel like what was surprising was, what I always find is it seems like the shot that you don't really intend to be the best one kind of turns out being rad, where we were like right over Los Osos Estuary and there was the dunes and then the plane doing these banking sweeping turns. I mean, that was amazing, 'cause those clouds that were held up on those high mountains in the back, on the grade, they kind of gave so much depth, you know? On a normal morning when it's crystal clear, you don't have those layers and that was really fantastic. Yeah, like we said, it worked out perfect, the weather and everything this morning. And how was my, just looking for feedback here, was my communication good? It was perfect, that's really what we want to hear as the pilot, tell us before you get the shot and you even pulled up a picture while we're flying. "Here's what we're angled for, this is what we're aiming for, this is our target". And I'm like, "perfect", I got that envision, and now you almost don't even need to say anything at that point. I know exactly what you're looking for. I was explaining to the team here, a big part of this is just, you get in the air and so much is going on, it's loud, the window's open, it's chaos, and you're trying to pull down your mic, pull it back up so you're not having all this ambient noise. It's nice just to be able to use hand movements being like, "okay, I'm good. We're good. Let's go up, let's bank" and I felt like we had that communication going, which is pretty nice. We did. I could just kind of nudge you and be like... At a certain point I would try to say something, but I didn't even almost need to 'cause you kind of knew, you kind of know what I'm looking for. And that's the key, we were on the same wavelength, but to further that is right before, we go "here's our hand signals". Because your head's gonna be out of the window. You can't talk, there's so much of that wind coming by. "Hey, when I go like this that's up, down, bank left, bank right. Non-verbal communication I find in those situations is so helpful because, if you lay it out beforehand, it gives you a sense of what I'm looking for and then we can just communicate that much faster. And often times my head's down out the window and I'm just kind of like "yeah this that", It's hard yeah. Yeah. It is tough, but like I said, as soon as you get that envision as the pilot, you're on the same wavelength. That's the biggest key for me, that's the best success. And I say with these scenarios, with aerial photography, especially air to air, because we're just kind of shooting general landscapes, we have all the time in the world, we can just cruise and open up, but then there's this moment where you bring another plane into it and so much of it relies upon pilot, not only that pilot, so it's really collaborative. I feel like this effort of creating beautiful imagery or cinematography, it's so collaborative in that we're working towards one thing and then two, three minutes of flying will cultivate into like five seconds. Yeah. Right? Which is crazy. That was awesome. I haven't really done much aerial, like photography air to air like that. I've mostly just done to the ground. It's so easy because "okay, you wanna circle around that? No problem we can do that all day long". Yeah, exactly. Now we have this other element of "here's the spot, we need the plane" it just is all about timing. And I can see your brain working, you're like "okay, he's gonna do a figure eight, I'm gonna bank." And then you're waiting for that last... It's really cool. So I don't know, I was super stoked Chris, that was fun and I really hope we get a chance to fly together again too. That was fun. That was a blast. Yeah! Right on. Cheers. Right on.
Ratings and Reviews
lorenzo p
Great intro class from one of the masters of adventure photography
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