Tag Archives: angle

Almost Directly Under the Approach

Photographing airliners can be a little “samey” since there are lots of very similar jets and getting a shot of them from the side looks much like any other shot unless the aircraft is specially painted or the lighting is particularly unusual.  Consequently, every once in a while, it is fun to try and shoot from a different angle.  The approach to SEA when the planes are on a southerly flow brings them in over a part of Burien where you can get yourself pretty much under the flightpath.

It won’t take too long before you are again getting a sequence of repetitive images, so it isn’t going to be useful for much time, but it is a chance to do something a little different.  Head on shots from a distance are possible.  Then you can get the shot looking up from the underside.  This might be a tight shot of a part of the airframe, or a wide angle shot of the whole thing.  An opportunity to do something a little different when you are photographing aircraft that are not ones where you care about missing the shot as you might when something special is coming in.

The Curves Are So Cool

At quiet times, I browse through older shots to see what I have shot in the past that might not have been the most interesting subject of the shoot but was worth another look.  I had been photographing with a bunch of guys at O’Hare a few years back as the evening was drawing in.  We were out at the west side of O’Hare and the evening light was great.  An Embraer E175-E1 took off and turned overhead us.  The low light angles picked up the underside of the aircraft as it turned.  The bottom of a wing has a lot of complex curvatures to it and the low light angle really emphasizes that shape.  This shot really appealed to me for that reason.