By Ted Grussing
… will take you a mile, but a mile of runway will take you everywhere. It’s true and no other place is as neat to hang out as at an airport. A number of years ago a gentleman from Switzerland flew his Euro helicopter from Europe to the USA with stops in Iceland Greenland and multiple stops in Canada and the USA before arriving in Sedona … it was very cool and somewhere I have the photos of him and his friend flying around the area. You never know who or what you will find at an airfield … adventure is always present though … and smiles.
I spent the afternoon at the airport waiting for a group of three Ospreys that were supposed to come in from Southern California … unfortunately they had some mechanical problems and will not be coming in until tomorrow evening and I’ll be back up there to shoot them.
Whilst waiting, there were a number of neat aircraft coming and going … I was surprised when I got home and looked more closely at the images … it appears that One has hijacked yet another aircraft. If you look closely, you will see that she is flying right seat in the Lear 45 that is taking off … wow, she has talent.
The Cirrus 22T taking off below, belongs to a neat couple who are on their way back to Georgia; they had just stopped in here for fuel and a bite to eat before resuming their trip eastward. His wife was busy taking photos of us taking photos of them.
Shooting a jet is easy because you can shoot at very high speeds … the Lear I shot at 1/1600th of a second, but to get the Cirrus I dropped down to 1/250th of a second and the reason is that you want to get the propellers in motion because propellers that are stopped and do not appear to be in motion are not plausible … so you pan the aircraft, the aircraft remains sharp and the background has a motion blur as does the propeller. The Cirrus was doing something over 100 mph or about 150 feet per second so during the exposure of 1/250th of a second the plane traveled about 8.5″ so no panning, no sharp image.
So, perhaps tomorrow we can have a mechanical Osprey and a flesh and blood Osprey … or not!
Have a beautiful day … smile and keep breathing.
Ted
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The easiest way to reach Mr. Grussing is by email: ted@tedgrussing.com
In addition to sales of photographs already taken Ted does special shoots for patrons on request and also does air-to-air photography for those who want photographs of their airplanes in flight. All special photographic sessions are billed on an hourly basis.
Ted also does one-on-one workshops for those interested in learning the techniques he uses. By special arrangement Ted will do one-on-one aerial photography workshops which will include actual photo sessions in the air.
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