AIR SHOW PHOTOGRAPHY

June and July are air show months in the upper Midwest. The action starts at the Great Minnesota Airshow June 26-27 at the St. Cloud regional airport. There will be a lot of performers highlighted by the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels, and expected visits by B-17 and B-24 airplanes. For more information go the their website at: www.greatminnesotaairshow.com.

Then on July 17-18 there are two opportunities to view and photograph airplanes in action. Locally the Wings of the North put on Air Expo 2010 at the Flying Cloud airport in Eden Prairie. This show is scheduled to showcase a wide variety of vintage planes including a B-17, a B-25, a Mustang P-51, an L-39 Albatross and a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter among others. To see the complete list of scheduled performers go to: www.airexpo-mn.org or the Wings of the North website at: www.wotn.org.

On this very same weekend (17-18th) the Duluth Airshow will take place. It will feature many modern planes including a Navy F/A-18d and a USMC Harrier. There will be performances by the Canadian Forces Sky Hawks (parachute team), a program by the USAF Thunderbirds, and a recreation of the attack on Pearl Harbor titled "Tora Tora Tora" that according to the shows website will feature a lot of smoke, fire and explosions for your photographic pleasure. The website to learn more about this airshow can be found at: www.duluthairshow.com.

Last but definitely not least is what is billed as the biggest airshow in North America, the Airventure show in lovely Osh Kosh, Wisconsin. This years festivities take place between July 26th and August 1st. It features flying machines of all kinds including experimental aircraft. The program features far to many performer to highlight here. For more information and directions go to: www.airventure.org to view them all.

Now that you know where to see all the airshows this summer, it might help to get a few tips on how to photograph all of the action. So I turned to a airshow veteran John Ringquist who has a website dedicated to flight located at: www.ringquist.com. I've included a few examples of John's amazing work to give you an idea of what is possible to shoot at these shows.









John would like to share the following tips for successful photography at an airshow:

1. Shoot slow shutter speeds (1/125th or less) to capture the propeller in motion rather than stopping the prop.
2. Panning is the best method for capturing moving planes. Remember to be steady and follow through with your pan after the exposure.
3. Shoot fast shutter speeds (1/500 or faster) for the jets and remember to pan.
4. Bring extra batteries and cards. This type of action eats up both when shooting multiple frame-per-second exposures.
5. Go to www.maxair2air.com and John's website to see examples of what type of images to look for when shooting.

My thanks to John for providing us all this valuable information for great action shooting this summer.