This Friday May 8, WWII planes are flying over the National Mall. To enjoy the sky parade, Exposed DC is hosting an event around the Jefferson Memorial. Photographing airplanes flying in the sky can be complicated—timing is everything. To help anyone bringing their camera down to the Mall, I asked aviation photography expert, Chris Williams, who also taught our Knowledge Commons class at Gravelly Point last fall, a few questions about his craft and to share a few tips about capturing great aeronautical images.
Photograph the WW2 Flyover of the National Mall on May 8 with Exposed DC!
Update: Our National Parks permit was approved! We’ll have a small tent and rest area, and Exposed magazines available for sale. We’ll have our banners out so we’ll be easy to find!
Living in the nation’s capital affords us some unique opportunities for photography. On May 8, 2015, we’re about to get a doozy. Between 30 and 60 airplanes that flew in World War II are going to do a flyover of the National Mall to celebrate the 70th anniversary of VE (Victory in Europe) day.
Join Exposed DC for a meetup at the Jefferson Memorial, where we’ll get an incredible view over the water of the airplanes flying at 1,000 feet over Independence Avenue. The first aircraft will fly over the Lincoln Memorial at 12:10 p.m., and the flyover is expected to last between 25 and 40 minutes.
We’ll also have a special guest: Colonel Scott Willey of the U.S. Air Force (retired). Scott Willey is a retired US Air Force colonel who has been around airplanes all his life. He is the senior docent at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center, is a volunteer member of the restoration team that works on all of the museum’s artifacts, and lectures widely on aerospace topics. In addition, he is the principal author of the nearly 1800-page set of docent guides that covers both the Mall and Udvar-Hazy displays.
You can find tons of information about the flyover at Air & Space Magazine, which is the media sponsor for the event (and where your lovely Exposed DC director is an editor), including other viewing sites if you sadly don’t wish to join us, what aircraft will be flying over, and WWII-era spotter cards you can download and print, or view directly on your smartphone.
Stay tuned for more info, including swag from Exposed DC, photography tips from our aircraft spotter experts, and more!
Friday Links
A frog aiming for the moon, famous photographs and the way their prints started out before manipulation, photos of the massive flooding in Colorado, and wonderful events happening around town and more, are all ready for your Friday Link digestion.
- We have to start off the links this week with a tribute to the frog that has gone where no frog has gone before. Perhaps Kermit didn’t want Miss Piggy and the rest of the Pigs in Space to be there alone. RIP little Rocket Frog.
- “No individual photo explains anything. That’s what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium.” Can you trust anything you see in a photograph?
- While not a photography exhibit, this installation from James Turrell can teach photographers a thing or two about the way color and light react with one another.
- If you ever thought that images were not manipulated in the days of film, think again. These notes on the prints from Magnum’s master printer Pablo Inirio show the lengths he went to to make images shine. Handy tip: you can add notes like that to an image with a Photoshop layer, ensuring you make all the adjustments you need.
- The Denver Post shared a large collection of photographs showing the damage from flooding in areas Colorado.
- Some great events coming up this month. The Washington School of photography is hosting a used equipment sale on the 21st. Photographer Sandesh Kadur is sharing his work from the Himalayas with the International League of Conservation Photographers on the 25th. Former Washington Post photographer Andrea Bruce will be speaking at the Corcoran on the 26th. These events, and many other photography-related happenings can be found on our Calendar page.
- Film or digital? You don’t have to pick just one. One photographer is forced to rethink the way she shoots after damaging her digital camera, and the results surprised her.
- Don Bartletti made beautiful shots of an experimental airship called the Aeroscraft. We hope this ends better than the Hindenburg.
- The Banham Zoo recently named their two tiger cubs, and the pictures are just as adorable as you would imagine.