Supermarine Spitfire MkIXb captured by D750 / 24-70f2.8
The A2A photo mission was already on the books, the images in the client’s hands within an hour of recovery. It was a spectacular flight producing some one-of-a-kind images, but I wasn’t done. In fact, I had just begun on the project. I had, by delivering such powerful images put bigtime pressure on myself to keep that level of imagery at a minimum if not exceeding it for the rest of the project. How, the flying was done.
That’s when I turn to the weather for an assist. One thing I can work is clouds and with most subjects, dramatic clouds can have a big impact. Looking at the weather after recovery, I saw that rain was coming and rain in Texas can be quite the show. Doing my weather thing, I figured that it would end and move on around sunrise. And sure enough, it came, it poured and started to break at sunrise. Ramps are designed to shed water, fast but with the broad landscape pretty darn clean background, what I had in mind is what you see above. I had a very willing client permitting me to push out the Spit in the dark for the sunrise. He ended up joining me on the ramp, so did a couple of other pilots. For the next thirty minutes we pushed the Spit from puddle to puddle to work the skies and reflection. While not ~as~ dramatic as the A2A images, they don’t suck. It’s just one way I go about besting my own work.