Leesburg Airshow

This past weekend I took my granddaughters to the Leesburg Airshow here in Northern Virginia. The sky was extremely overcast which made for a pretty poor photographic background. It did, however, give me an opportunity to spend the day with my granddaughters and also to take some photographs. Several of the photographs turned out reasonably well and are included in this blog post for your enjoyment!

I learned multiple lessons that, hopefully, will help me in the future relative to photography. When these airplanes were in flight it was very difficult to capture them properly in the frame. After a few mistakes I realized I would be better off if I was shooting in continuous mode. That is probably a big Duh from the more experienced photographers reading this blog post. However, for a slow learner like myself, it was not something I immediately thought about. So one of the first lessons I did learn, was that it is very important to consider the photographic shooting environment before taking the first photo. I’m usually so excited to take pictures that I seldom consider the complete environment beforehand.

The next learning opportunity arrived when I tried to use the panning technique on a few shots with mixed results. The few photos that did turn out somewhat decent were mere luck and not due to any skill on my part. This is the next lesson learned. It was not a mistake to try pannin; however, I do need to practice it more often to become proficient at using this technique. Combining panning and continuous shooting mode was not something that immediately occurred to me. I did use it for several photos and the results were an improvement on the shots taken earlier in the day.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, the sky was very overcast and gray and it made for a poor photographic background. Needless to say I did not use the proper exposure in several instances. Looking back on it, some of these photographs would have turned out a lot better had I dialed in either a slightly different exposure or perhaps minimized how much sky was in the photograph. Another option obviously would be to use Photoshop to replace the skies in these photos.

Speaking of using Photoshop, I did try it for the composite photo of the parachutist and the American flag. A couple of months ago I shot several photos of the American flag against a very nice and colorful sky. It was my intention to use these for backgrounds in some future photo, but I did not have any idea as to when. This is another tip that I picked up from my photo club. Always shoot backgrounds for future use. I have built up a small library of various backgrounds; however, my limitation is utilizing them with Photoshop. I just recently subscribed to the Adobe Creative Cloud and I am in the process of attempting to learn Photoshop. The composite that you see here was difficult because of the number of ropes dangling from the parachute. I did the best I could to select the parachutist and then to erase the background between the ropes. The photo came out okay, however, don’t look too closely at the ropes!

The airshow also featured an exhibit of several classic automobiles. Two of them caught my eye for their photographic potential. I have included them in the blog for your viewing pleasure. As always, I came away from the shooting opportunity with a few decent photos but the most valuable thing was the experience of taking the photographs. There is a lot to learn in becoming a better photographer and I am enjoying the journey, even if the results are not great to this point. Now enjoy the photographs from the Leesburg airshow.