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Reviewing Photos from Sunrise

All right, you guys. So I want to go over a quick kind of just review on some of the images that we shot, while we were up in the Cessna shooting the biplane, sort of this plane to plane scenario, and then documenting some of the landscapes over the Central coast. Now, again, I think it's important to realize that I've been to this location before. In fact, I've grown up here. So I have a good bearing on what I was looking for and what I was shooting, but ultimately you never really know what you're gonna get. The conditions are always changing. It's always good to kind of come into it with an idea, but then again, be willing or able to shift depending on sort of what those conditions give you. This morning was gorgeous. We had some really, really tucked away clouds, there was a really crystal clear sunrise. The dunes had been kind of wind swept, so there wasn't a lot of tracks on 'em. The ocean had like a East Northeast wind, so it was offshore really clear. So ultimately there was so...

me things working in our favor and some things kind of working against us and vice versa. One of them being just the speed of the two planes. One thing I want you to notice is... Not really that you can notice in the images, but just notice in general, is that when you do take up planes and or a plane with a heli or a paraglider plane, matching those speeds can be really challenging. Cessna 172, and a helicopter will travel at very different speeds. So will a biplane and maybe a paraglider or something like that. So it was really challenging at times for us to kind of circle up and find each other in that capacity. Luckily we had coms, which was a really big help. And so ultimately what I'm getting at here is that when you are shooting in the air, it can feel like war, it can feel like you are in a battle. There's wind, it's hitting your eye. Your eyes are getting water, your face feels chapped from basically the sun beaming into the window there, it's brutal. And at times, yes, you wanna do everything you can to compose this beautiful, well thought through shot, but really you're literally just sticking your camera out that window, and you're just pushing down the trigger. And I get it, I know that that can seem super just forced and not intimate at all and anything like that. But the reality is this is what you do to sort of get the shot sometimes. So that being said, just prior to me, going into some of these compositional tips and sort of reviewing some of the images I shot, I wanna just touch base on what I used this morning, so that you can have a good understanding of how these images translate to the camera and vice versa. Now, first and foremost, I shot the a7r4, again, just like I said, I was going to, 24-70. I never actually put on the 16-35, mainly because I wanted that little bit of extra length on the 70 mill, because I'm flying with two pilots I've never flown with before. That being said, I'm not totally confident in my ability to get super close to the other plane. I didn't really have a very, very, very specific shot in mind. I kind of had some general ideas. And so with this lens, this kind of gives me the best, I would say capabilities to kind of zoom in, but also not be too, I guess you could say stationary with my subject, meaning that I'm just compressing him into a landscape and it feels like it's kind of static. So I love this feeling of movement, the ground falling away beneath me showing some sky, especially when I'm seeing the sun rise. I love being able to see that little ball of sun bolt over the horizon there. That's something really important to me, and being able to show that horizon line. Why? Because again, shows those layers. So circular polarizer on here. Again, one little trick tip I would say, is that get a polarizer that's good. Get one that actually can't just spin off really easily. This one has a really smooth barrel, that's actually a little thicker. And one of the reasons I love this guy is because you can actually feel it with gloves on. So you can feel the polarizer, the ribs on it when you're moving it with gloves on. In addition to that, I kind of oscillated between shutter speed priority and manual shooting. And the reason being is because sometimes the plane was going like this and like this, and it was just changing constantly. And I honestly am always trying, whether I'm in the water photographing surfers or in a housing, or I'm in a plane, I want to set up my camera to do as much of the work for me. Why? Because if I can take out some of the variables, the variables being spinning my shutter this way and spinning my aperture this way and yada, yada, it's just gonna make life so much easier. So for me, being able to shoot in shutter speed priority was really helpful. I did later on when the light got a little more overhead, which means it was a little more even, I shot manual. And what I did there was, I would basically, as we would kind of come into the light, I would bump the exposure up, couple hundredths of a second on my shutter speed, and then we would go into the darkness, I would do the opposite. So that's kind of how I set up my camera. Again, typically what I'm doing is I'm center spot focusing and it's auto focus single, so I'm just pushing this button once to focus. Because again, all I'm really trying to do is focus for the lens link. So 24 or 50. What I mean by that is that my subject, everything is gonna be at infinity. So it doesn't matter what I'm focused on, the plane, the whatever, as long as I just capture focus at infinity, the mountain, the plane, the city, everything is gonna be in focus. There's no need to focus on something really close to you. So what I mean by that is I'll be kind of zooming out, getting a wide shot, focus at infinity once, shutter, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, focus in 50 mil refocus, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, or zoom in rather at 50 mil, refocus, boom, boom, boom. So ultimately I'm just getting these variety of lens links at that kind of the desired shot that I want, getting like a 24 or 50, a 70, and each time I'm sort of refocusing singularly and then just firing off as many frames. And I do have this set on burst mode, which is 10 frames a second. And I do suggest shooting burst mode if you are shooting landscapes, only because if you're going up there and you're just going click and shooting one, the chances of that being a failure is high. And so I'm always relying upon hopefully having one good frame out of a couple When that plane is turning and it feels inside, like you're just kind of stationary, nothing's really happening, you're actually having some G forces and there is the speed of the plane that's moving. So you really wanna be cognizant of that. Now let's dive into some of these images. This first photograph was kind of the first shot that I had told these guys about. I said, I wanted to fly over the dunes. I was hoping to kind of capture something that would show the plane sort of coming over this dune field early in the morning. This was shot right at sunrise, right when the biplane lifted off. And what happened was we took off in the Cessna, we did a circle around the dunes, and then we waited for the biplane to come out. And ultimately with this frame, I'm kind of looking for that rule of thirds, like the horizon line, if there's some dark space in the middle, there's the dunes lit up. This isn't my favorite photograph, but it does kind of illustrate what I was hoping for in that initial frame. Okay, here we go. So this is then Pismo Beach. We're coming down the coast and you see Pismo up here, it's really iconic. You have these clouds in the background. The reason those clouds really pop and feel super vibrant is because the polarizer is engaged. That polarizer is really helping to kind of offset that color. It's also helping in some capacity to allow me to cut the reflection of the sun on the ocean, 'cause the sun is coming this direction, and it's sort of reflecting across the surface of the water. By cutting that reflection, I'm allowed to see a deeper shade of blue in the ocean, and that actually helps a lot. So this photograph, again, if my assignment here was, oh man, I'm gonna document kind of like a tourism job for Central California Pismal Beach, this would be a great shot that would show, oh wow, you have the pier, you have the city right there, and then it goes into open space and it... You can see the image kind of stacks up. And again, what I'm trying to illustrate here is my process or my creative process of ideally showing where you could go beyond that. I'm not just honing in on the pier there, which would be a great, beautiful abstract or honing in on the city. I'm kind of showing this entire landscape, much like I would, if I was in Yosemite valley and I was shooting a 16-35, I'm kind of taking the same perspective here. All right, now we move up the coast, and this is one of my favorite areas. I really like this side light. So one thing to keep in mind, we tried to fly in the evening, but we couldn't. I was used to flying in the evening because the sun is coming this way, and so the ocean has this beautiful, warm light, so does the hills, but in the morning it's very different. So I kind of had to readjust my shooting style or what I was hoping to do in the morning. And in fact, what it did is it changed my entire flight path around, instead of coming around this direction, because I wanted my side or the door where I'm shooting, the window to be kind of on one side of the mountains, I decided to go the other way, because I wanted to shoot in the sun in the morning. So again, morning, evening, that will really change the way that you sort of, I guess, direct your flight, direct your pilot, direct your flight path. I love this shot. You can see, I leave a little space at the top of this frame. You can see where the ocean, the horizon goes, you can see where the mountain, the horizon goes. There's even in fact, like just a little tiny sliver of light above the mountains there. And I like that leading line, as it pulls you out. Bottom end of the frame, you can see just like little bits of kind of sunlight weaving in and outta these Hills. There's a road that kind of lines in here. And the images kind of split 50/50, ocean to land mass. And I really like that juxtaposition, the warm and the cool. So this is again, probably shot right around 16 or 20 millimeter. I can tell just from the lens length, I'd say the other photograph of Pismo Beach was probably shot right around 70, 'cause we were a bit further away. This is looking back North. So really the same stretch of coast, but now I'm flipped around. And what I love about this frame is that if you kind of read it left to right, you'll see I come into this image and I'm seeing boom, there's the coast, there's the plane, the biplane, rocks, rocks rocks, and then it leads you up. And there's the Diablo Canyon power plant in the background, just really subtly. There's a little sliver of gold on this road and then the sun. And so what happens is kind of the image reads as a story a little bit. The plane is giving you the direction of where it wants you to look or where it wants you to go, and then the sun is in the very back corner, so corner to corner, there's something interesting. And this is really an important aspect. In this image you'll see that I did happen to cut off the top of the mountains, probably because I was framing down to get that plane. One thing I want you to think about and always consider here is that when you're shooting another subject, a plane, a paraglider, if you're just shooting them looking straight down, it can be pretty uninteresting. In fact, they can lose all sense of shape and scale. It's really important that they will kind of sway back and forth. And oftentimes what I was telling the pilot, was I was saying, "Hey, the shot looks great." Ask him to do some shallow turns. What do shallow turns mean? Well, it doesn't mean these big banking turns, because then we'd have to follow him back and forth and back and forth. I just wanted him to give us a little bit of the wing. So as his wing turns, he gets us a little bit of glimmer in that sunlight, and it's really beautiful. Now this next shot, this is my favorite I've seen so far. And just so you know, right now, this is the first time I'm seeing all of these images. I love this photograph because of the contrast of dark blue on the far right and absolute gold on the far left. And there's something to be said, but the fact that this is actually known as Montana de Oro, which means mountains of gold. And you can imagine maybe why some of these, I don't even know the first settlers who came through here, would've seen the mountains and thought they looked like gold. It's pretty beautiful. Seeing this, and then right Kind of dead center of the frame is the plane, the biplane, just doing a subtle turn. Now, if I had my choice, I'd probably have put the biplane, maybe a little more to the left or a little more to the right. He's not dead center, but he's just to the right of it. Mainly because if this image was to go to print, I'd wanna be able to split it down the middle as a spread. But again, in this frame, you're seeing, you can see all the way to the horizon. You're seeing a very, very wide angle perspective, almost straight down. I would say the strut is just right out of frame here. Again, I'm probably shooting this right around 800th of a second, this is right around ISO 200. And I would say this frame, one of the reasons I'm just so compelled by it is because of the wide angle perspective. It doesn't quite have the distortion that like a fish eye would have, but it does have like that 16 millimeter, 20 millimeter wide angle, where the corners are starting to get slightly dark, the sun is kind of starting to peel in. And one thing you'll notice is that if you are shooting into the sun, and you want that classic sun flow, that classic Starburst, the wider you shoot, the more likely you are to get it. One of the things that's really great about this image is that much like, if you were shooting skateboarding on the street where you wanted to have a studio effect where you would put your subject... Or any type of sport for that matter. In a dark spot, to really make them pop. The plane in this situation is literally right in the shadow, but it's still in the light. It's contrasted against the shadow of the bluffs, but its wings are in the light. And so it just pops, your eye immediately is drawn straight to it. This is a Rad Shot. Definitely not the photograph that I was thinking about getting, but seeing this, it's really interesting. It's kind of light, that's cascading down the Los Osos valley. Again, I'm not really a huge fan of seeing a town or seeing lots of civilization. I would say if anything, I'm kind of trying to avoid that here, but it has a really beautiful glow to it, because it's casting a light on a lot of this green grass. You're seeing all this low fog in the valley. You're even seeing a little sliver in the bottom left corner of the estuary there. But what really makes this shot the hero is the fact that there's this beautiful gradient bottom left is pretty dark, and it gets lighter, lighter, lighter, lighter, 'til eventually, up in the right hand corner, just kind of fades away. What's interesting about that? Well, it's nice when there's a smooth gradient. And you can see in this photograph, we chose not to edit it, to preserve all the highlights, meaning that we let the sky slightly blow out. That's great, that's an awesome perspective because what it does is it kind of gives us stylistic perspective. You can see that in this frame, we warmed it up a little bit, we took like a cognitive choice to add a little tonality to this image off in the right side of the frame, just kind of like almost to where you don't see it, the plane is right there, just having a little glimmer, it's flying maybe like a thousand feet above the ground. But what really draws me in are those distant peaks, the volcanoes that make up the San Luis Obispo, and ultimately there's a low fog below the cloud. So I love the layers in this. I would say that one thing that's cool is just how it reads. Again, this is an image where I might be putting in my gallery, because somebody who's local might really want a print of this in their home, or it could be something that I could sell or license to a local business or local entity of some sort. Again, it's a really cool establishing shot saying, "Hey, like, look how beautiful this." Again, this is literally looking just about 180 degrees the other way. And it looks completely different. One direction was straight into the sun, this direction is actually looking kind of three quarters the other way. And it's so vibrant, so colorful. Again, this image prior to this had a lot of tonal gold hues, like kind of some green, some yellows, this one's all about the blues and the warmth of the sand dunes. So again, this is kind of an interesting photograph because if you look at the landscape, you're seeing how the mountains and the dunes, they all converge like this, because the dunes are kind of falling away from us and the mountains are kind of going straight. And so they kind of almost point us in the left direction. I do love the Rule of Thirds here. Again, you'll notice if I was about 500 feet lower or a thousand feet lower, my mountains, my estuary, my dunes, my ocean, they would all kind of be falling in line. And that's great, that can be really cool. But ultimately when I'm in the air, I wanna be taking creative liberties to really give myself separation between those subjects. So that's the first and foremost thing that I look for. In this situation, ocean, dunes, estuary, mountains, cloud, sky, I'm giving each one kind of equal space. I'm not zooming way, way out, to show more ocean, or zooming way, way out to show more clouds. I'm finding that zoom, that sort of lens length that gives me an even relationship to each one of them. And I think this image is really strong. I really like it. Again, you'll notice that there's parts of it that are kind of like a tiny bit blown out. I probably shot this like a little bit overexposed. That's fine. Why? Because in this situation it's more important that the image is sharp, and that it's level, and that you shot it correctly, versus that it has a slight overexposure here or whatever. And you're gonna find that, you're gonna find situations where something might be kind of blown out because you're shooting reflected clouds or water, or right into the sun at times. Another frame that's just kind of slightly wider, but this one shows more rock, the stacks, the estuary. It's a really cool establishing image. What you'll notice in this one, that I did show more water and I did show more sky, but they're even. See that's the difference, is that instead of showing a whole bunch of the ocean, that's just kind of a big blue blob or the whole bunch of the sky, there's an even amount to it. So what that means, and what you'll often hear is that the photograph is weighted well. It has a good weight to it and it kind of sits correctly. This is kind of the moment in between looking into the Morro Bay Estuary there, a really classic and super famous Hollister Peak in the background. I kind of love the idea of looking for icons. There's something really beautiful about shooting a photograph that feels timeless. And in this image I chose the biplane because it's timeless. (muffled voice speaking) I'm sorry, we're closed right now. You are closed? Yeah. I just asking who did it, and was there any problem, I was blowing- Oh, we're good, thank you so so much. No, we're perfect. I really appreciate it. Thanks brother, you're the man. So with this image, I'm really looking for a timeless aesthetic. In the background, you can see Hollister Peak, which is like the timeless big mountain in San Luis Obispo. You also have the biplane, which in and of itself is timeless. The whole point, the whole goal of choosing that plane over maybe a small jet or something along those lines, or even a helicopter, this photograph in some capacity is hard to date. Yes, it's shot in 2020, and yes, we shot it with brand new technology, but the point being is that this could be edited to look or could be made to feel like it was shot on film in the seventies, and that plane would've been around. And the beauty of creating a timeless aesthetic or a timeless quality to your image is that they're photographs that hopefully will stick around a lot longer. They're photographs people want on the wall, because they kind of reflect bygone era in some way, and that's a really important thing. Every image I look for that I want to add to my collection, I want there to be a timelessness to it. Another thing you can do to create that is by shooting that silhouette. I'm shooting into the sun, and in some capacity that's creating a sense of anonymity, which is really important also. Another iconic one. This is really cool because you have the stacks, which sadly it's a power plant, but it is very iconic Morro Bay, it's on their logo. You have Morro Rock, which is the big iconic feature here. Planes coming around the backside of the rock. You have waves in the foreground. I love all the layers here. You'll notice I left a little sky. I'm always looking for that anchor of a little bit of sky, sliver sky clouds, mountains, but the real hero here is the rock, and then the plane. And this is one of the situations where, again, I'm just shooting this probably like at 50 millimeter, 70 millimeter, I'm focusing on the rock, grabbing focus there, and then I know that everything else is gonna be sharp because as long as I can grab focus on that thing, that's in the distance, I'm good. This one was kind of just a happy accident. One of the things you'll notice is the plane is still lit up, even though it's in the shadow, even though it's in the darkness, it still has that beautiful light on it. That kind of rim light. If it was too close to the Rock, the Rock itself, would've hidden the plane in its shadow. The sun would not have been able to reflect on it. So there's an appropriate distance is what I'm saying here, where the plane is still lit up, but your subject to your background feels dark and kind of still ominous. Another perspective of the Rock. We're looking for icons. Oftentimes when you are flying somewhere like in Switzerland, you might be flying around the Matterhorn. You might be in Iceland, flying around mala filled volcano. You're kind of looking for these icons. And I think what's really nice in my perspective, is that when you have sort of an icon or you have something that is a bit larger than life, so to say, or a big feature, mountain or waterfall, it's really easy to kind of work that area. You have this one fixed focal point, as opposed to like, "Let's fly over this dune field." It can be hard for a pilot to kind of hone in on what you're looking for, "Which dune where yada, yada yada. So this rock, we were able to fly towards it, fly around it, fly above it. We were able to move in and around this subject and capture a lot of different images of it. So this is one of those things where if you're gonna go out on your first flight, try to focus on something in particular, it really helps to kind of bring out the best in your photography. Again, looking Northbound towards Montana de Oro with the dune fields, this image I enjoy, I feel like on the left side of the frame, I'm not super happy with all that darkness there. I wish I would've just moved this image over or my framing over to the right, show more ocean. This is a nice example of how you have this beautiful, warm sand dune, beautiful blue ocean, but I'm kind of cheating it to the left a little bit. I'm almost making your eye look at some of this dark shrubbery landscape a little bit too much, which kind of bugs me. I want a little more even weight. And I wouldn't even mind this line of the shoreline coming right up the center of the frame. Wow, this one's Rad. So this is probably a favorite here. I've got these two beautiful volcanic peaks. I've got distant peaks in the background, and then in the middle of that is the plane, but it's kind of framed by these S turns of the estuary. And there's this beautiful estuary in Morro Bay that at low tide kind of has these beautiful, almost fingers that come out. And this frame here, I think this is one where obviously you can really tell all the pieces come together. It kind of all brings you into the center point. Two mountains, the biplane's, right, kind of almost dead center, and this estuary bringing you into the center. So compositionally, I'm looking for those features that might bring your eye to a central focus point. And there we are, this is one where you can see the wing. I'm shooting at 16. The wing doesn't even matter in this case, because the focus of what you're looking at, the estuary is so pretty, so beautiful, so vibrant, that it's truly such an interesting thing to look at. And I think what I'm really loving about this is that it's kind of a good to show, the happy accident, where like, when it comes down to it, don't worry about what else you might be getting in, the strut, the wing, just get the shot you need, you can always crop later. This is a frame where I could easily crop the top of the frame out, and get that wing out of there, without losing the context of what's important, which is this beautiful fern that's kind of braided out as the plane flies over. It's a really gorgeous scene. Wow, holy cow, this one's Rad. So again, we were trying to line up this shot where we're basically, we were... This is the hardest shot we tried to do, because the Cessna is taking these big circles, and the biplane's taking these small circles, in order to match our speed, because the Cessna is faster. And we wanted to kind of frame in this biplane against this estuary and these really cool patterns, almost snake-like patterns. And this is a situation where I'm using the polarizer, I'm cutting the reflection, so I can see deep inside the water, plane is flying right over. It's giving me a lot of context as to how big this landscape is. I would say that this frame and the frame before is probably my favorite. This is one I shot with a 70, but again, this could have been powerful with a 70 or 200 if I wanted to. So you guys, those are kind of some of the images I shot from this morning. This was probably what I would consider as the more challenging shoot, plane to plane, trying to coordinate all that with the pilots. This evening, we're gonna hopefully get out in heli and I'm gonna be able to shoot just some more pure landscape images, and a bit more broad and diverse landscape. But thank you for joining me this morning. That was a fun trip. It's always great to work with new pilots, it's always great to see how they communicate. And I think that there was kind of an instant rapport created with me and the whole team there. So I was really shocked that we actually got anything of note and I'm pretty stoked on what we created.