ChildofVision.com 2017: A photographic journey
United States Air Force Thunderbirds
I've photographed the USAF air demonstration team "Thunderbirds" dozens of times and have never gotten a picture I really liked. Nothing I've ever taken captured what I thought was the essence of their demonstration, the mix of power and grace. At the March Air Reserve Base airshow this year I was set up with a couple other photographers and we kind of all simultaneously noticed the moon rising higher in the sky, closer and closer to show center.
The Thunderbirds demonstration started, the last flying act of the show. I started framing a lot looser than I normally would, trying to anticipate when the F-16s would cross near the moon. I have a lot of shots of the jets with the moon half out of the frame, with the moon in frame but only half a jet on the other edge, and the moon and jets and a ton of empty space between. But as they were setting up for this pass I could tell they would be close. The 7d II shoots at about 15 frames a second at the highest frame rate, so I just tried to lead them and anticipate where the moon was going to be. The group of photos from this pass had the jets and the moon in only 2 shots, they were moving at high sub-sonic speed. I like the balance of the fast moving jets and the serenity of the moon, and the shot is perfectly sharp and the exposure is spot on.