I was researching some historic imagery for EAA and came across this shot of my good friend Tommy Poberezny. Tommy, Charlie, Gene and I got to be very good friends over the years as we did assignments together. First they were "The Red Devils", then "The Christen Eagles", then Charlie and Gene each went out on their own when the Eagles formally retired. Lots of great times together in the air and on the ground, wonderful memories...................and man, I had carte blanche at Oshkosh when Tom and his Dad were running it, it was so fun!
We had Frank's fabricating people build us a mount for my Nikon so we could capture this image of Geno, it became one of his very favorites. We orchestrated the shot after the sun had gone below the western horizon so the ground would be a dark whoosh and the horizon would create that beautiful line of light running along the fuselage. I used a Nikkor 16mm full frame fisheye on the Nikon F3. I triggered the camera with a remote as Gene flew knife edge over me in that plowed field.
As long as I'm wading through memories, this was a shoot in the Arizona desert with Delmar Benjamin and his GeeBee Racer. This airplane was so abrupt that Delmar had to put pool noodles around the fuselage members in the cockpit to keep it from bruising his ribs as he tossed it around the sky.
Good Bud Paul Bowen, ostensibly the father of air to air still photography. Paul, one of the finest gentleman I have ever had the honor of calling my friend, gave me my first B25 sortie in "Axis of Evil". I guess that one could say we were aviation photographers "before it was cool"........................... He is also the father of the cloud layer vortex image, which he will readily/humbly tell you was just dumb luck but it became his signature.
As I worked through the folders I got increasingly melancholy looking at all the friends/performers who have gone west. Not surprising, the airshow business is not exactly a risk free enterprise................
Learned about a small sunset airshow 100 miles away two days ago so I took a quick trip last night. Saw one of the very few Japanese Zeros that are still airworthy, that was a first for me. In order to make sure I would get a few decently sharp shots at 1/125 second, I took the term "spray and pray" to a whole new level.
Douglas
ILCE-1FE 600mm F4 GM OSS lens600mmf/8.01/125s100 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-1FE 600mm F4 GM OSS lens600mmf/10.01/125s100 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-1FE 600mm F4 GM OSS lens600mmf/7.11/125s500 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-1FE 600mm F4 GM OSS lens600mmf/7.11/125s500 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-1FE 600mm F4 GM OSS lens600mmf/4.51/125s500 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-1FE 600mm F4 GM OSS lens600mmf/6.31/125s500 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-1FE 600mm F4 GM OSS lens600mmf/10.01/125s100 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-1FE 600mm F4 GM OSS lens600mmf/10.01/125s100 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-1FE 600mm F4 GM OSS lens600mmf/7.11/125s500 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-1FE 600mm F4 GM OSS lens600mmf/4.01/100s10000 ISO+0.3 EV
Beautiful pictures Jim. I'm still trying to figure out a remote for an F3 back then but you freekin nailed it...What an image....The GeeBee came to town over twenty five years ago, and he flew upside down under a flagged ribbon. Crazy Impressive. No digital back then but somewhere I have a film shot of it, was on my wall in my office for many years and everyone would always comment on it. He couldn't even go down the runway straight because that plane was so big and tall in the front, he would weave back and fourth to get lined up for take off.
Bill Gass wrote:
Beautiful pictures Jim. I'm still trying to figure out a remote for an F3 back then but you freekin nailed it...What an image....The GeeBee came to town over twenty five years ago, and he flew upside down under a flagged ribbon. Crazy Impressive. No digital back then but somewhere I have a film shot of it, was on my wall in my office for many years and everyone would always comment on it. He couldn't even go down the runway straight because that plane was so big and tall in the front, he would weave back and fourth to get lined up for take off. ...Show more →
"S" turning is a standard procedure for tailwheel operations, so you can see what's in front of you, but planes like the GeeBee, the Corsair, P40, etc, take that to another level, cuz you can't see a thing. I always felt a twinge of relief when I got the tail of the T6 up on take off, because I could see something besides a peripheral view of the runway. Lad Doctor, the head of The Cavanaugh Flight Museum was in their corsair at Oshkosh years ago, he was waiting in a formation on the runway for the Air Boss to clear him for the take off roll. He mistakenly thought that he heard the clearance and began his roll, when the tail came up he immediately saw Howard Pardue's Bearcat sitting dead stopped in front of him. There was nothing he could do at that point and he hit the Bearcat, sheared the wing off it at which point everything turned into a ball of flame. The Corsair tumbled and broke apart (with it was designed to do in a carrier mishap, Lad, and his cockpit cage were thrown clear of the fire, but he suffered irrepairable spinal damage leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. The Bearcat was restored and flew again to ultimately kill it's owner in a Cuban 8 maneuver on a take off that was basically a suicide, literally a "hey watch this!" move that left everyone stunned, Howard had 11,000 hours in his Bearcat...................
JWilsonphoto wrote:
"S" turning is a standard procedure for tailwheel operations, so you can see what's in front of you, but planes like the GeeBee, the Corsair, P40, etc, take that to another level, cuz you can't see a thing. I always felt a twinge of relief when I got the tail of the T6 up on take off, because I could see something besides a peripheral view of the runway. Lad Doctor, the head of The Cavanaugh Flight Museum was in their corsair at Oshkosh years ago, he was waiting in a formation on the runway for the Air Boss to clear him for the take off roll. He mistakenly thought that he heard the clearance and began his roll, when the tail came up he immediately saw Howard Pardue's Bearcat sitting dead stopped in front of him. There was nothing he could do at that point and he hit the Bearcat, sheared the wing off it at which point everything turned into a ball of flame. The Corsair tumbled and broke apart (with it was designed to do in a carrier mishap, Lad, and his cockpit cage were thrown clear of the fire, but he suffered irrepairable spinal damage leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. The Bearcat was restored and flew again to ultimately kill it's owner in a Cuban 8 maneuver on a take off that was basically a suicide, literally a "hey watch this!" move that left everyone stunned, Howard had 11,000 hours in his Bearcat......................Show more →
Sorry, I couldn't "Like" that post. Very sad and unfortunate events.
