Improving aviation photography

[ukaskew]

I had a great time at RIAT on Sunday, but the photography side of things left me feeling a little flat, on reflection. At times the light/cloud was fantastic to work with, so compositionally it kept me occupied, but the rest felt like point and shoot. Buy a nice lens = get pretty pictures. I think I only used two settings all day, 1/1600 ish for jets and 1/160 for the few props there. Stuff like this has been very well received in various places, but no real effort was required to capture it:

RIAT 2016 - F35 by Chris Harrison, on Flickr

I'm not saying my work is exceptional, I just want to inject some creativity into it and make things a little more challenging, so where do I go next with it? Panning along the runway was great fun and gave me a glimmer of the fun when shooting a motorsport event, but as I was at the far left end we only got two planes in that situation all day (Red Arrows and A400M). I'm hoping to address that by attending at least one of the midweek park and view days next year.

RIAT 2016 - Red Arrows by Chris Harrison, on Flickr

Are there any guides/tips for advanced techniques to play around with? Is something like slow shutter speed panning a viable thing to look into when the jets are actually displaying up in the sky? The vast, vast majority of photos I've looked through have all been high shutter speed stuff.

 

[Nod]

Play! Get the banker shots done then go slow and get creative. Hard to do these days but if possible, get in front of the flight line - the Red Arrows flying straight at you (and below your altitude) is a great shot (and experience!)