Andy knows how to fly airplanes. And he has the license to do it. How cool is that?
So when they contacted me to shoot some photos of them flying over Dallas, I couldn't say yes fast enough.
However, shooting in a tiny, four-person plane has a unique set of challenges. First, it's tiny and a standard 50mm lens wouldn't cut it. In fact, even a 35mm wouldn't give me the width I'd need in order to fit both front-seat occupants in the photo. At least not in the way I wanted to.
So I picked the widest lens I could find that wasn't a fisheye. Nothing against fisheyes, it just wasn't part of my vision. That and getting my own body in the shot was already a concern, and with a fisheye, I was pretty much guaranteed to get my knees/feet in every shot.
So super wide angle it was. I still had to do some yoga-esque twisting in order to keep myself out of each shot, but the guys were cool with me taking over the back of the plane (which I did).
On the plus side, since we were in a tiny bubble, the light couldn't have been better. Thankfully! I can't even imagine trying to rig up lights for this. They'd have to be aimed in through the outside and this "easy" shoot would have gotten way to extreme and expensive way too quickly.
It was so windy, we ended up shooting on the ground. That worked out for the better, anyway, since I had to get out of my seatbelt to get angles.
Plus, Doug and Andy promised to give me a ride at a future date. I'm going to hold them to it!
