About a week ago I got the chance to take pictures while flying over my hometown — Chattanooga, Tennessee. The situation wouldn’t be ideal, I’d be in a plane, not a helicopter, which meant I’d have to shoot through windows and wouldn’t be able to hover over stuff. Still, aerial photography had been something I’d wanted to do for a really long time and I didn’t know when I’d get another chance to do something like this, so obviously I accepted.
We planned to fly during golden hour. This would’ve been a great idea if I hadn’t been shooting through windows. Anytime I was shooting into the light, there was all kinds of glare on the windows which not only hurt my photos, but also made it very hard for my camera to focus through the window. Next time I think it might be better to shoot with the sun up a little higher. I could get rid of the glare by pressing my lens all the way up against the window, but then I wouldn’t be able to move my camera around and compose my shots. Although I did use a small lens hood on one of my lenses, it probably would’ve been better to not use a lens hood and get as close to the glass as possible.
I was shooting with my Nikon D5100, Sigma 17–50mm f/2.8, Sigma 70–200mm f/2.8 (non-stabilized version), and my FujiFilm X100T. All of these worked great except the 70–200mm. The pilot had told me that telephoto lenses don’t work too well for aerial photography because the pictures always come out blurry, but I figured if I kept my shutter speed high enough I could get away with it. Well, the telephoto was really a hit or miss. Shooting at 1/2000th of a second I did get some useable images, but I also got some really blurry ones. I would suggest shooting wider and getting a sharp photo, then cropping in for any photos where you would normally use a telephoto.
All in all, I had a really great time shooting aerial photography and I’m very happy with the pictures I captured. I’ve already planed another trip in the plane and I’m really looking forward to it! If any of you have done aerial photography before and have some tips, I’d love to hear them! Leave a response below!
If you’d like to see all the photos I captured, you can visit my website:
Still want more? Watch the behind the scenes video:
