I’ve always been fascinated by aviation. Then in 10th grade my science teacher was like, “dude you barely passed algebra and need like tons of physics courses and stuff to get into that.” She told me I was dumb in a really nice way. Bless her heart. Anyway, my dreams of flying the Millennium Falcon or even an X-Wing were completely shot.
Today, though, I got an opportunity I have been seeking for quite some time. I received a ticket to the Air Show at the airport in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I have missed the past few years in Ocean City, Maryland so I jumped right on this chance.
There were several pilots doing really cool stunts in really cool airplanes. I had never shot or tracked anything this fast so this was a great learning opportunity for me. I took full advantage. I brought my Fuji GFX 50S II for my walk around camera using the 45-100mm lens. For the aerial stuff, I used my Nikon D850 with a 200-500mm Nikkor lens with a 1.4TC. I removed the TC as it had trouble tracking in AF-C mode. After removing the TC and simply shooting 200-500mm and fine tuning some settings I was able to get some satisfactory images.
The Blue Angels were the obvious headliners. There was also a solo F-16 flying around as if it were the Ferrari of the skies. In between everything there were other pilots flying some older aircraft doing some phenomenal stunts almost making them look like they’d crash. A P-51 Mustang also raced a Tesla Cybertruck. Guess who won? Unfortunately I was behind the tents so I missed the race.
The Life Lion also took flight. Although no barrel rolls, flips or inverted flight, it was cool to see such an important aircraft to our area do a few pass by’s. It was nothing shy of skillful flight displaying pure ability and talent. These pilots and helicopters are relied on for every day life saving procedures regardless of weather conditions. They are the true heroes of the show. That being said, it was positive experience to see them displaying their flight mastery over the local Harrisburg skies proving their abilities to save lives.
The sheer propensity to control their aircraft and the pure skill these pilots displayed today blew me away and I am now FULLY addicted to continuing to get better at photographing aircraft of all types! What an amazing day! It was also awesome running into my good buddy Kenny at the show! It was his birthday this weekend, so I made sure to photograph him eating his favorite milkshake. Enjoy the photos below.
- Mike
Navy’s Blue Angels #5 and #6 doing some inverted tricks roughly 12-18” from wing tip to wing tip, cockpit windshield to cockpit windshield. These are the elite of the elite. Phenomenal performance. Really makes you appreciate everyone in the military who keep us safe.
