Doing My Job

The Blog Post title is a take on Coach Bill Belichick’s oft used phrase “Do Your Job.” It was chosen to emphasize the challenge I have been trying to meet of “scouting” and being prepared to shoot photographs so as to make them something of which I could be proud.

The New England Patriot’s Football team had chosen Theodore F. Green Airport in Warwick, RI to be the airport where their airplane is stored and from which the team takes off for away games in the NFL. As the gods had ordained, I live only five minutes away from Green Airport, so I said it’s only fitting to try to capture a photograph of the team’s plane taking off.

Besides actually having a photo of the Patriot’s Plane as a fan, I thought that trying to take a photo of a plane taking off would help develop my photo and camera skills. This it actually did, for I had to figure out when the team’s pane would take off, find a vantage point to shoot without being stopped for security reasons, and finally try to get the most advantageous angle to shoot the photo. Actually choosing the camera settings was the easy part of the process.

There was a Warwick City Athletic Park adjacent to the airport so I could shoot without fear of police or security. The problem was that there was a wire fence surrounding the airport so my angle of shooting was drastically impeded, at least from capturing the plane lifting off. The next best angle was to capture the plane immediately airborne, which I did. [Notice the partially retracted landing gear (done 1-3 seconds after leaving the tarmac).]

The final hurdle to capturing the shot was that I was facing into the setting sun on a late fall day. The Patriot’s were choosing to leave for the away games in the late afternoon (c.3:30 and 4:30 PM). So, for a portion of my shots I was capturing a backlit plane. As the plane proceeded upward the background setting sun became less of a problem.

The current shot was the second time I visited Green Airport to record the Patriot’s Plane taking off. The first time was a disaster. Not only did I not realize that I would be shooting into the sun (at least part ways), but I ran out of CF card memory space. The above posted photo was taken with a Canon 5 DS, EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM @ 185mm, f/9.0, 1/400″, ISO 200, using DxO Optics Pro 11, Adobe Camera Raw, Photoshop CC (2018), a gradient map, and Color Efex Pro.