Wild Blue Yonder

I was able to have a very cool experience Friday. I went for a flight in a World War II T-6 Texan warplane.

There is a small grass trip airport in Kokomo, Glenndale Airport. For the past 10 years they have held Glenndale Days which is a fundraiser for an organization that helps families with children suffereing from Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). The two day event features a bunch of Piper Cubs and Cessnas, along with military aircraft such as a T-6, P-51 and Stearman Biplane. Kids and adults can get rides in some of the planes and others are there for show or to put on aerobatic displays.

I've shot the event the past couple years, such as the Soundslide I did in 2007. It's a pretty fun time, see all the different aircraft. And I'm a big airplane fan, particularly the older stuff they have on display there. It's kind of like going to the Smithsonian Air Museum or EAA in Oshkosh, albeit on a smaller scale.

I had an email waiting for me, along with a phone message at the office when I started Friday afternoon. Steve Stants and his wife Laura run a flight school from the airport and I've talked to them several times over the years, taking their photo etc. Steve called to let me know that they were taking the T-6 up for a PR flight for a reporter from the weekly news ragsheet in town and was curious if I would be interested. Well sure.

 Pre-flight cockpit portrait, in my flight suit and strapped in.

Image by Erik Markov

 

I got to go up for a 20 minute flight in the second seat of the T-6, piloted by Laura Stants. Great day to fly with clear blue skies, do some barrel rolls. It was pretty damn cool. I've been up in Pipers, Cessnas, various helicopters, experimental garage built aircraft, hot air balloons, Stearman Biplane, a World War II B-17 bomber and an Air Force KC-135 refueler. But I think the T-6 takes the cake. You won't be doing barrel rolls or any real aerobatics in those other aircraft. It's the closest I'll come to knowing what a fighter pilot of any era feels. And it's nice when someone recognizes your interest in something and thanks you with such a nice gesture.

I'll let the images do the talking now.

Looking out over northeast Kokomo,

Kokomo Airport can be seen at the top left.

Image by Erik Markov

Looking towards the tail of the plane.

Image by Erik Markov

Halfway through a barrel roll,

looking out the top of the canopy

down at the ground.

Image by Erik Markov

After my flight.

Image by Erik Markov

Light painting

I spent the past weekend geeking out on light painting. There's maybe six days during a month where there is no moon, or at least not enough to mess up the exposure. But between having to work, crappy days of weather, whatever else; that shrinks to two or three days. It ends up being a couple late nights and sleeping in some the next morning.

Saturday I tried a new location. I know a gentleman in Kokomo who has a nice collection of restored cars. I've even gotten a chance to drive one or two of them. The one I was interested in was not so restored. At all.

This is a car built by Elwood Haynes, an inventor, car builder, all-around smart guy who lived in Kokomo around the 1890's.

Short history lesson: He is considered having built the first American automobile, even before Henry Ford. Haynes built his first car in 1894, and Ford built his first car in 1896. You can even look it up on Wikipedia.

Anyway, this guy I know has this Haynes sitting out in the field next to the road leading up to his house. When he bought it, the car wasn't really in shape to be restored, but over the years he's stripped parts off it for other Haynes cars he has restored. It sits, it rusts, it looks like part of the landscape.

This was a light painting I knew I would get around to eventually. Indiana doesn't have much going for it. But the one thing it has, particularly for a photographer/light painting is classic midwestern scenes.

After playing around with a straight on image of the car, I lowered the tripod. Working the camera up underneath the front bumper, I tried this angle. I liked all the weeds obscuring the grill just a bit.

Like I said, I geeked out on light painting. Sunday I went out to a barn I've been to before..... and I whiffed. Shot for a couple hours, came home. Looked at the images the next day, nothing. I just had nothing that I thought worked. It happens sometimes.

Monday, I re-visited a location I've already been. Back in October I checked out this gas station. For that image I had composited the final picture using Photomatix HDR software to take separate portions of the overall scene I had light painted and using the software I combined all those portions into one image. It worked ok, but for that particular scene, I just felt like it didn't work as well as I wanted. Someone who looked at an 8x10 print of it would probably think it looked ok. Except I could look at the original image on screen, zoom in, see all the imperfections caused by the software.

Those imperfections are what drove me to go back and re-shoot the scene. And I am happier with this result.

 

 The original image from October.

The new image.

The angle between the two images is a bit different. But I felt like the new image is blended together better.

Starting out tho, I couldn't find an image. I was trying a different angle when I first got there, and it wasn't working. The image looked like I was hitting the scene with a lighthouse, not light painting technique. After the previous night at the barn, I thought maybe I was losing my mojo. I couldn't find the light I was looking for.

I moved to this angle, slowed down, started switching up my light between my spotlight and my Maglite. And it started coming together. Looking at the two images side-by-side, the one thing I like about the original is the yellow light of it. It looks old, sort of antique. The light in the new image is more white. That's a result of the tungsten white balance I was using. Although I was shooting raw files, I went with tungsten because it seemed to help the sky color. That bit of brightness behind the station is the light of the town a mile away and Kokomo beyond that. Using daylight or AWB turned that sky pretty cruddy.

That's a problem in Indiana, among many problems. Don't get me started. Light pollution is really bad in most places, which of course doesn't help in light painting. Most people don't see it or don't think about it. But in a five or ten minute exposure, it really shows up. I can control moon light by only shooting during a new moon. I wish I could force a town to shut their lights off. Not to get all "green" but I wish there would be more those worldwide blackout nights.

One other image I shot and played around with a bit in Photoshop. Looking for that antique look. Not sure it completely works, but it's interesting to look at.

I've got some other images from these two scenes uploaded to my Sportsshooter.com page. 

All images are copyright of Erik Markov.

The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

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Do easter eggs glow in the dark?

I had the first easter egg hunt of the year to shoot Saturday. This one was an adult easter egg hunt. Haven't heard of that too often. To make it a little more difficult, it was held just after the sun set.

I got to the park and was a little dismayed at what I saw. I saw a lot of eggs spread out over the large field. It reminded of this easter egg hunt from last year. Except that was a hunt for kids, not adults. From the map they had showing the "hunting grounds," it looked as tho all the eggs were out on the field, not in the woods as I thought they would be. How hard is that? I was pretty sure this was going to be a stinker of an assignment.






Once all the eggs in the field had been found people walked into the woods to look for eggs. I don't know how many eggs were there, if any, but it certainly made for more interesting images. I love being proved wrong about an assignment, it just happens so rarely that I've gotten used to that sinking feeling seeing a possible great assignment go bad. Glad that this turned out to interesting.