Tag Archives: video

Reno Air Races

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This year I made my first trip to the Reno Air Races.  I have no clear explanation why I haven’t been before.  It has been in my calendar for many years but other things always seemed to conspire to stop me from making the trip.  This year, I finally made it.  I could almost have never made it.  With the accident at last year’s races that killed a number of spectators, there were plenty of questions about whether the event would go ahead.  Fortunately it did.

I was covering it for Global Aviation Resource.  My article will shortly be published in their monthly digital magazine so, if you want to get the full story (and the better pictures) pop along to www.globalaviationresource.com to buy the magazine.  I will not reprint anything here that is in the piece for obvious reasons.  However, to tempt you a little, here are some other shots from the event that will hopefully give you a feel for what went on.

It was quite a learning experience for me.  Fortunately, I had a number of friends their to give me guidance on what to do, where to go and what to look out for.   The bus trips to the pylons were a great experience (if a little odd sometimes when we were shuttled about between heats) but getting so close to the aircraft as they turn was something special.

Planning became a real priority.  Each race is relatively short with most being six laps.  In that time you have to get all of the shots you want.  Tight crops, loose views, pylon in the shot, video, slow shutter speeds and there you have used up your race!  Getting into my stride took a little time but I soon got a feel for what I wanted.  This does mean there aren’t many opportunities for a second chance so you have to shoot a lot quickly to make sure you get enough to work with.

This does result in shooting a lot of images over the time there.  All of these have to be downloaded and checked.  I won’t say exactly how many I shot but it was a very large number and culling the crap out was a time consuming business.  I am still weeding out some now!

The media relations team at RARA are unbelievably helpful.  They have a lot of people covering the event yet handle it all with a friendly approach and they really do make your life genuinely easier – not always the case!  I planned out my time at the event to get me to the pylons at some points, in the pits and the flightline at others and the final day was mainly spent in the stands.  My friend Paul had traveled up for that day so it was nice to have someone to chat with while watching the racing from the spectators’ viewpoint – even if I did have to leave that for a while to cover part of the ceremonies.

A great experience all round.  I hope to be back again next year.  In the mean time, please do head over the GAR’s site and pick up a copy of the magazine!

Poplar Grove

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After my visit to the WACO reunion as recounted in a previous post here, I had a lot of pictures of a WACO owned by Steve and Tina Thomas. They own Poplar Grove airport northwest of Chicago. I had been there before and my earlier visit is described here. I decided to print a couple of shots from the sortie and take them up to Steve as a thank you.

I dropped in one Sunday and found Steve in his office. He was pleased with the pictures and took me off for a tour of parts of the field. They own a lovely Beech 18 as well as the WACO and their hangar has a great selection of prints and memorabilia on display so we had a look at that. Then we headed up to the hangar of Sean, another WACO owner. We chatted for a while and watched some Cub flying activity on the grass strip in front of Sean’s hangar.

Steve needed to get back to work so I got my car and ended up back at Sean’s place. We chatted about the usual aviation stuff while he cleaned his aircraft and I watched the flying.  The Cub was being flown by Rick Kluver and, when he knew there was a camera nearby, he came by to give me something to shoot.  He landed after having finished with his two previous passengers and we chatted for a while.

Rick’s Cub is one of the planes that I shot when we went to Oshkosh for the skiplane flyin and I had met him then.  You can see a previous post about that here. Anyway, it didn’t take long before he offered me a ride.  It would be churlish to refuse so I hopped in for my first ride in a Cub.  I took the camera along of course.

Rick says he gets altitude sickness so likes to keep it low.  In a plane like a Cub with the side open, this is a great way to fly.  Down amongst the scenery, we got to see some cattle in a river and even some deer that we obviously startled a little.  It was a fun little trip and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  There was time for a little video to be shot so the results of that are below.  As before, Poplar Grove proved to be a friendly and welcoming environment. I will be back!

WACO Reunion

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I have previously mentioned that I am more interested in getting to events that are slightly more individual than the bigger airshows these days.  That also includes when I am trying to get material for the magazine together.  One such event was the WACO Reunion in Mount Vernon OH.  This was being covered for a piece that I was writing for Global Aviation Resource and will appear in an upcoming edition of the magazine.  Consequently, I am not going to preempt the magazine piece here.

Instead, this is more about the time I had while I was there rather than a description of the event and the organization.  I had been in contact with Andy Heins, president of the national WACO Club earlier in the year to make sure I could cover the event.  Andy told me what I needed to do to be there and then made himself available to tell me all about what was going on.  The event is a gathering of club members and their aircraft and is a very social event.  There is no flying display.  However, the members like to fly their aircraft and that is what they do.  The middle of the day is quite quiet but early in the morning and later in the day when the weather is a lot more calm is the time when people get in their planes and fly.

Fortunately, that also included me getting to fly too.  My first trip of the day was in a Citabria with Tim Ponds.  This was to get some aerial shots of the aircraft parked to illustrate the article.  Time was very accommodating and we got some video footage as well as stills of the site.  While we were up, Steve Thomas was flying his WACO and we arranged an impromptu shoot.  Normally I am not inclined to shoot air to air without a prior brief.  However, we kept it simple and straight and level and I was able to grab some good shots.  We also flew past the airfield and got a couple of shots with the aircraft parked in the background.

Then I got my first flight in a WACO when Susan Theodorelos took me up in her beautiful model RNF.  This is an open cockpit model with the pilot in the rear seat and a two seat space up front for the passengers.  I was on my own in this case so had some space to move.  A couple of other aircraft joined up for some formations and I was able to grab some shots of them at the same time.  Vibration was not too bad but keeping myself isolated from the airframe was tricky so getting good shots was a bit tricky.  However, I got some I was pleased with.

One technique thing I learned from these flights was focus activation.  I normally focus with the rear button on the camera rather than the shutter button.  This is fine in almost all circumstances.  However, when you are trying to shoot backwards at an odd angle, this is a lot harder to do and the shutter button becomes the best solution.  Swapping the configuration in flight (I hadn’t expected to shoot another aircraft when we first took off) wasn’t practical so some odd contortions were necessary.  Now I have added this config setting to my quick menu so I can make the change quickly if the situation should arise again.

Everyone at the flyin was very friendly.  Aviation never fails to amaze me with the way in which you can show up somewhere for the first time with nothing but a shared interest and be welcomed so quickly by people you have never met before.  The WACO people were a perfect example of this and I can’t thank them enough for their hospitality.  I hope to be back again for future reunions.  In the mean time, here is a little video that I got while there. Enjoy and don’t forget to buy the magazine when it comes out at www.globalaviationresource.com!

Stormy Clouds Roll In

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With warm weather comes the chance of storms.  Many times I have noticed the storm as it hit us and wished I had been down on the lakeshore to see the whole thing run in and get some good lightning shots with the city skyline.  This recent occasion I was more aware of the impending deluge and managed to get half of what I was after.

I positioned myself for the storm in good time.  Ahead of it, the clouds rolled in and produced some very impressive formations.  The Midwest is great for “end of the world” skies some times!  Unfortunately, the storm never really got going with the lightning.  We got a few bolts but not very many.  The rumbling from above was unmistakeable but it didn’t produce the photo shots.  I did get one big bolt but it never got dark enough to allow some long exposures so I was always hoping to catch something.

I did leave a second camera running with the video when the clouds rolled in.  I have accelerated the speed of the video to show the clouds in a shorter clip that will hopefully be more acceptable.

Some Board of Trade Video

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Over a year ago I shot a job that Midwest were undertaking on the Board of Trade building here in Chicago.  The job was spread over three weekends and I was there for the first two.  The job involved lifting a lot of steelwork and piping into location at the back of the building where the steelwork was then assembled using the helicopter to move the individual pieces into position.

All of this was a touch trickier since the assembly location was close to the building which is pretty high.  Therefore, 300′ of lifting line had to be used which made the job of maneuvering the helicopter to position the loads just that bit harder!  The final week involved the cooling towers being put in place but I could not be there for that.

I shot a bunch of stills but also got a fair amount of video which, at the time I did nothing with.  While doing some work on my database recently, I realized just how much footage I had and decided to have a shot at editing it down to something a bit more digestible.  Here is the result.

Final Overnight Time Lapse

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I mentioned before that I had tried to do an overnight time lapse video.  In that post I detailed all of the ways I had screwed up the process.  Rather than sulk, I did take all of those lessons to heart and went back for a second attempt.  This time, I was a lot more successful.  I hadn’t got around to figuring out how to make the tethering work properly but the alternative was acceptable and I had learned the rest of my lessons.

One minor hurdle still existed.  Our windows are not at their cleanest at this time of year and shooting through the glass is the only option.  We are due to have the cleaners take care of them shortly (although that will probably only guarantee some rain immediately afterwards).  In low light and with a wide enough aperture, the dirt smudges are not too much of a problem.  I have to make sure the shoot doesn’t include any time with direct light on the window which would make the muck flare up in the shots.

The other minor issue is a function of the double glazing.  More intense light can show up the effect of the light bouncing between the glass panes.  At night this isn’t a hassle except with the moon which is so bright.  For some reason I should be able to figure out but can’t, the center of the window almost totally removes this effect and it gets worse towards the edges.  However, the moon is so bright in the scenes it blows out and, since the whole thing animates to a video, the loss of shape in the shots becomes less apparent as the moon zips across the sky.

With all of that said, here is the video itself.  It seems to have worked out well.  Sadly, the messed up effort seemed to have got some more interesting light sequences from the windows of the building but you can’t have it all.  Enjoy!

What a Balls Ups

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I have previously played around with time lapse videos made with an SLR, a timer release and some software linked to Lightroom to create the finished video.  I decided to go a little longer with one and make a video throughout the night, starting before sunset and finishing off once the sun had come back up again.  This did not prove to be as simple as I had hoped!

It should be pointed out that most of these problems are entirely of my doing.  First of all, I did a calculation of how many shots I thought would be necessary to complete the clip.  This was more than would fit on one of my compact flash cards.  No problem, the camera has a second slot.  It turns out that, unlike the MkIV which will switch to the second card when the first is full if you so desire, the MkIIN won’t do that.  Okay, not problem.  I shall tether it to Lightroom and download direct to the laptop.

This didn’t work.  I believe this was also my fault as the MkIIN has a firewire connection as well as the USB and the USB tethering showed up on the computer but didn’t actually do anything.  Okay, I can fix this.  I shall let it run for a long time and change the card shortly before going to bed and the new card should work through the rest of the night.  A fully charged battery and off we went to dinner.

Upon my return, I find that the camera is not shooting any more.  Foolishly, while I worked out that a 16Gb card would be fine, I didn’t remove the 8Gb card that was in there so the card was full.  I swapped the card with another one quickly and set it off.  A while later I come back to check on it and nothing is happening.  The new card is full.  I hadn’t formatted it first.  What a fool.  I also have a flat battery.  This is not going to be good.  Fortunately, the MkIIN came with the DC adapter as standard (unlike the MkIV – how tight are you Canon?) so I swapped that in, put in a fresh card and formatted it.  Then I went to bed.

This finally worked.  The remaining shots worked fine.  The result wasn’t too bad but, since it had some obvious jumps in it – the moon was traversing the scene when the gaps occur – it wasn’t usable.  However, it did teach me a bunch of thing that I now need to deal with for the second attempt.  let’s see if I can balls that up as well!

Thornton Quarry Video

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The Thornton Quarry lift job with Midwest Helicopters was a full day job so it provided a bunch of opportunity to try different things.  This was true for the stills but it also allowed me to experiment with the video as well.  Since the aircraft was operating all day, I was able to get to multiple locations and see all aspects of the job as they happened.  Normally, this isn’t possible since a lift will only last about 30 minutes.  In that case, you have to pick the location that will get the shots you must have and accept that the alternative shots will not be made.

This time I was able to move around the whole site and capture as much as possible of what was going on.  Some of the clips looked really interesting and the time but they actually proved to be no use.  Some of the boring stuff as it appeared at the time actually ended up being really of use when it came to editing.

At this point, it is important for me to apologize to people like Gerry Holtz.  Gerry is an editor and he does this sort of thing for a living.  Anyone else who knows about editing professionally, you are all due my apologies and my respect.  I am trying a bit with video editing but what I have learned is that it is bloody difficult to do.

On this shoot, most of the video was captured using my SLR.  The rest of it was shot on a GoPro which is such a great little device to get something a little more unusual.  It was handheld (or mounted in the case of the GoPro).  No tripods or dollies and certainly nothing as impressive as a Kessler Crane!

I suspect that to be good at editing it is important to have had some education in the process.  I am doing it the guy way – try something and then try something else and see what happens.  Not even a manual to consult!  Consequently, I make some progress but probably my approach starts from the wrong place.  If I was going to do a lot more of this I would take the training aspect seriously.  However, for the time-being, this is a little side hobby so I will probably stick with what I am doing.

Part of the fun(?) of the edit process is taking all of the disparate elements of the footage and trying to combine them into a coherent timeline.  Part of the engineer in me thinks it should be delivered in the same order it happened.  This is rubbish of course.  The viewer has no concern of course.  As long as the result doesn’t obviously have terrible jumps or continuity issues, no-one is going to be any the wiser.

Also, how much do they need to see.  About eighty lifts were done during the day.  Does the video need to have eighty lifts?  NO!  In the end, I concluded that two lifts were enough to tell the story.  One wasn’t enough but it didn’t need more than two.  I cut the length down as I went but even then it was still quite a long piece.  A pro would probably have it down to a couple of minutes but then, as I mentioned, I am not a video pro.

One lesson I have learned as I have practiced this video stuff is how many of the tools the software has are no use at all.  There are a million transitions between scenes, all of which make it look like you are experimenting with the software but they are a distraction from viewing.  I have learned to use simple transitions that are short so they are not obvious to the viewer.  They just stop the jump being the item the viewer focuses on.

Anyway, the final part of this story is that I was very happy with the result for this video.  Unfortunately, it turns out the company that was doing part of the work is very sensitive about their equipment and doesn’t like the equipment being shown on the video so I have had to remove it from my YouTube channel.  Consequently, I can’t include it in this post.  Oh well…

Some Fishy Video

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As you might have noticed, there is a bit of theme developing with some of the stuff I post.  Photos are the main focus of what I do but I am also dabbling more with the video side of things.  There are some things that video can show that stills do not represent as well.  Since the 1D MkIV arrived in my hands with the ability to shoot HD video, I have been surprised how many times I have taken some video along with the stills.

Anyway, all of that is a roundabout way of saying that I have got some video from the Shedd Aquarium here in Chicago that goes along with the previous posts on the swimmy things.  It is shot through glass (of course) in the public areas so I know that the reflections are sometimes there but even so,  I hope you like it.