Kept Light Photography

Photography and Writing by A. Cemal Ekin

Somewhere over the USA


A week ago on Monday, Jan and I flew to Salt Lake City to see Elif and Mina. The first leg of the flight, Providence to Baltimore was about an hour. By a sheer coincidence, the exit gate for us was next to the connecting flight gate to Salt Lake City.

The wait was short and we boarded first along with other passengers who needed special aid. This time I chose to sit in the window seat so that I could take photographs. I have done this quite a few times using infrared cameras and I wanted to try recording the earth once more, this time in color. The clear weather was on my side making both the flight smooth and my photographing easier.

Aerial photography, especially at 30,000′ is very different from shooting landscapes. First of all, there are two layers of airplane window glass of dubious optical quality and cleanliness. Add to this the speed at which the plane is flying, the weather conditions, and unexpected bumps the engagement with the subject becomes a very different experience altogether.

Upon takeoff, the city and highways provide ample material to photograph. There is not much time to think and compose, one has to rely on one’s instincts. At these lower altitudes, things go by much faster requiring faster shutter speeds and reaction. As the altitude increases the clouds may enter the scene sometimes adding quality elements to the photographs and at others become a pure obstruction. But, be on the alert, a partially revealed scene below may offer interesting photographs.

The camera angle, the exposure settings, lens zoom all need to be carefully controlled. With quick-changing light, it is best to use some kind of automation. Either aperture or shutter-speed priority would work so long as the shutter speed does not fall below, say 1/250 seconds. I used aperture priority, auto ISO, and shutter speed not to go below 1/250 seconds. Of course, depending on the changing conditions some amount of exposure compensation is unavoidable. (Also, see the comment by Haluk below.)

The tricky part is the white balance with changing light conditions, clouds coming in and out of the view, ground color shifting. I relied on auto white balance and then tweaked it based on my mental images. The color may not be exactly accurate but “they looked right to me!” You may also notice the wide crop ratio of 1:2 rather than the camera image having 3:2. The wide crop in this case and in the previous instances allowed me to retain the feeling of looking at a wide vista while eliminating the parts that could not be left out when photographing.

You may have noticed in some of the photographs the appearance of looking directly down. A few of them were lucky moments when the plane banked and gave me a very good view of what is down below. In the other frames, I used Lightroom to yield a corrected view. That gave the land a better presentation of its features. Yet, others remained mostly the way I took them except for some cropping to get the window frame out or to remove the extreme rotation of the camera angle. (Thank you, Bill, for noticing this and commenting on it. Truth be told, this paragraph was in the post. But, thanks to my hosting company’s poor service my site crashed as I tried to save the post causing me to lose a good deal of content.)

These are not meant to be highly accurate reconnaissance photographs but photographs I want to share with you. The detail may be lacking, the colors may not be exactly correct (although I believe darn close to it!) but remember the two layers of dirty airplane window glass, all the clouds that are going in and out. I prefer that you enjoy the colors, shapes, texture, lines, mood, and the feeling encoded in the images. Come to think of it, that is the way to look at and read photographs.

I hope you enjoy traveling with me from Baltimore to Salt Lake City. Let’s fly!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. Beautiful shots, Cemal. Thanks a lot for sharing.

    I have also been doing this for many years now. I would like to share a few tips if you do not mind:
    – Never miss your homework as to which side you should prefer according to the position of the sun, etc..
    – I use the widest acceptable aperture since you are always focusing at infinity and do not need DoF; this also helps to evade the spots on the windows.
    – Together with wide aperture, I prefer ISO at 800, thus getting very short shutter speeds which I need. Using less grainy iso’s do not help when the scene is already muddled by the window.
    – Colour fidelity for me is not important. The colours are always off anyway. I go for aesthetically pleasing colour balances during post processing.
    – Last but not the least, always expose to the right. One cannot believe what tonalities are hidden behind those hazy vistas (assuming the sensor is 14 bits/pixel).

    Take care and best regards to Jan!

    Haluk

    • Haluk, I remember your aerial photographs but saw only a few you sent to me. The points you added are well taken although infinity focus did not work for a few photos I tried and switched back to autofocus. Thank you for adding your pointers to the post. Stay tuned for some Salt Lake and Salt Lake City photographs!

      Take care, hello to Turkan,

      Cemal

  3. Dear Haluk told everything But I see a lovely elephant in one of the photos. Thanks for sharing but more importantly writing.
    Best wishes.

    • I was wondering who would see the elephant, Ramazan. You are the first to mention it. There are other shapes subject to interpretation too. Thank you for visiting.

      Cemal

    • Daniel, I enjoy photographing my experience, visual experience. With drone photography, I feel that the personal experience is via a remote screen. The feeling of being up there and looking down is different to me. But, maybe I should try it at least once. Than you for your comment.

  6. Cemal,
    Beautiful images and thanks for sharing. I’m curious as to how you convinced the pilot to do those 90 degree banks so you could shoot straight down on the landscape! Must have been fun.
    Bill

    • Bill, some of them are indeed lucky bank shots. But others are corrected in Lightroom for the straight down look. I actually wrote that in the post but my site went down and I lost some content. Then, I forgot to add that part again. Thanks for noticing it, I will add this info to the body.

      Take care,

      Cemal

  7. Of course you need to autofocus – but that will be autofocus at infinity.
    The infinity mark on the lens barrel should not be trusted at all. Most lenses can be focused beyond infinity, making the whole frame blurred. I think they do this to accomodate for variations of the focal plane to lens distance due to temperature and other outside influences.

    Is Binnaz OK now?

    Regards to Jan and you!

    Haluk

  8. Beautiful as usual Cemal. It never ceases to amaze me how these landscapes make for such great abstract photos. I’m curious, is there a lot of vertical and horizontal perspective adjustment involved in post? I’m asking, because I’m just thinking of how the camera needs to be positioned during this type of photography. I’ve tried it-its challenging trying to keep that camera steady – and of course, sitting in those “very comfortable – extremely spacious seats”, making it so EASY to position yourself…..NOT!!!!
    -Sal

    • Hi Sal, I am glad you enjoyed the aerial views. The amount of perspective correction depends on how much you would like to correct the views. On some of these photographs, there is indeed a good amount of that. But many others have crop rotation, simple transformations. I want to present a particular view rather than what the camera recorded. Otherwise, I could have left at the point of cropping and leveling.

      You are right about those comfortable airline seats!

      Cemal