Inside Aviation Photography by Chad Slattery

Author:Chad Slattery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amherst Media, Inc.,
Published: 2018-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

Specs: Canon 1Ds Mark III • 24mm TS-E 8 seconds, f/8, and ISO 100

Note: The Canon 24mm TS-E tilt/shift lens was leveled on a tripod, then shifted vertically to include the V-tail tops without distorting the hangar walls.

Northrop Grumman MQ-4 Global Hawk NASA Control Center

The power of large raw-format files in postproduction

These before-and-after images again show the advantages of shooting large images in camera raw format. That in-camera combination gives photographers wide latitude to change colors without banding, and to enlarge details without pixelation.

When the Armstrong Flight Research Center acquired a Global Hawk UAV, NASA marked its arrival with a press day. Pilot Mark Pestana patiently answered questions and posed for photos in the small, dark control room. I used the time to plant a tripod, add a cable release to my camera, and frame the shot. After the other photographers left, I asked Mark to give me three minutes.

The only room light was a ceiling spot aimed at the wall decor. The exposure of .3 seconds was long enough to capture monitor data but short enough prevent Mark blurring with movement. My camera’s white balance is usually set to Automatic. That perfectly captured the room light’s yellow ambience—accurate, but boring. In postproduction I lowered it to 2400 degrees Kelvin to force the room to go blue, then adjusted each of the small screens to read correctly. The large monitor’s image was blurred, so I enlarged the most detailed screen—the UAV’s schematic—and substituted it. The ceiling was retouched, Mark’s uniform brightened, and magenta was added to the screen behind his head.

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