Let me preface this shoot by explaining some technical difficulties that occurred on this shoot. Notice the vignetting that occurs a few frames in? Well I think that was a by product of the internal reflex mirror within my camera coming loose. From the pictures you can see this happened while i was 2,000 feet in the air strapped to an open air 500 pound light sport airplane - not a good situation. But at the time only realizing these symptoms of vignetting, using the back screen on my camera, and not being able to see any light through the view finder (which was hard to tell anyways since I was wearing a helmet), coupled with previous shutter problems with this lens and my thought process being impaired by the fact that I was flying through the air I decided to remove the lens from the body at which point I saw a piece of my camera's internals fly to the ground below. I later found out that this was my mirror and my view finder and light meter were completely useless. Dismayed by the fact that I might need a new camera, which I can not afford, I drudgingly finished the shoot guessing my framing and exposures, and using auto focusing. Fortunately, once home I realized that the adhesive holding the mirror in the 5D has been know to come loose, in which case Canon will repair it free of charge. So My camera will be in the mail Monday, hopefully not for too long. But at least I got to ride in a quicksilver Sport 2S and fly a Thorp N18 over Athens.
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To give some more information, this was a one day shoot on Perry County Airport that I pitched as a photo package for the Post. Andy Snedden, who I met on assignment for South East Ohio Magazine, invited me out to see some ultralights fly and go up for a ride in one. There ended up being only two planes including Andy's, so it was not quite as big as I expected, but it was still an interesting time. Andy was the one who designed and built is own custom ultralight (ultralight meaning no more then 254 ponds, no faster then 55 knots and no more then 5 gallons of fuel). It is one of the most innovative and powerful ultralight flying machines. It caused a lot of commotion at last years Oshkosh in Wisconsin.
