Chicken (Near Colfax, WA)
Canon 5D Mark II, 70-200 f/2.8 IS II. 200mm, ISO 100, 1/500 sec. @ f/2.8.
As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry I was pretty worried about going to eastern Washington. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to come up with a unique view of the classic rolling hills of the Palouse region. One way we tried to get a different perspective on things was to rent a plane and take to the air.
The flight far exceeded my expectations. Not only was our pilot really nice, he did a great job positioning the plane to help us get the shots we wanted. He didn’t even mind spending 10 minutes circling two tractors at work while we shot them from various angles. The result was the above shot, one of my favourites from the trip.
We did learn a few valuable lessons regarding shooting from the air:
- Don’t be shy about asking the pilot to move the plane around so you can get your shot. You’re paying for the plane rental, so you control where you go (within ATC limits, of course!)
- Make sure you know well in advance the quality of the windows on the plane you’ll be renting. In our case the only window that opened was the passenger’s window, and it was only a tiny port. Vlad and David had to shoot through very scratched plexiglass (and still wound up with some impressive shots).
It was great fun though and we will definitely do it again next year!
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