Sightings: Head On
Sightings: Head On...
You don't normally see a DC-3 from this angle. Good thing, too.
AirSpaceMag.com, May 01, 2010                      
                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                
When photographers ask for a vertical shot, they don’t mean this.
The 70–200mm telephoto lens that Mike Shore of Austin, Texas, used to  grab this Douglas DC-3D created a compression effect, “in which the  subject appears a little more extreme in comparison to the background,† he says. “This is all in the glass, and it’s a great technique to  capture the eye.†The airplane landed in Bend, Oregon, around sunset on  January 14, 2007. Shore asked to make an air-to-air shot, and owner  Jonathan Phelps agreed. Helicopter pilot Sharon Vickers took Shore to  1,500 feet in a Robinson R44, where he set his Canon 20D at 1/125th of a  second, f/3.2, and ISO 800.
“It was really dark out,†he says. Pilots Steve Dunn and Paul Bazeley  flew the airplane about 15 to 20 feet off the runway at almost full  speed, about 140 knots, then performed a two-G, 40-degree pullup. Shore  made the photo as the Pratt & Whitney R-1830-94 Twin Wasp radial  engines, each with 1,350 horsepower, clawed their way to a thousand  feet, at which point the pilots banked right at about 100 knots. “At low  altitude and low speed, safety is power,†says Dunn, who was in the  left seat. “Always leave yourself a way out.†The finely restored  DC-3—“You could eat off her, anywhere on the airplane,†says Dunn—will  join a flyover of 25 to 30 DC-3s at the AirVenture gathering in Oshkosh,  Wisconsin, this summer.