Air Supremacy Over Elkhart is an annual R/C Airshow featuring military and classic giant-scale R/C airplanes.  This year’s event was held Sept. 12-14 at the Elkhart Airport and I was invited to come by and take photos. While radio controlled airplanes can be fun to watch and fly (I used to fly them myself),  taking photos of them can quickly become  monotonous.  Generally speaking, they take-off, fly in a big oval for a while and then land.  The photographer is not allowed to freely roam-around to “work the shot” but is instead delegated to the  same small area as the pilot controlling the airplane.    I threw the camera in shutter priority mode (1250-1600/sec), set  Auto Focus to AI Servo,  turned on high speed shooting and manually set my ISO to 640 to ensure a moderate aperture (and a reasonable depth of field).   Then, using my 70-300 zoom lens I took  a million boring photos (actually not all where boring, see above).

Since I was stuck taking photos from one vantage point, my only option for better photos was to change my subject,  but how?  A friendly pilot took his turn flying and I struck up conversation with him.  I told him that I wanted to see more of the top of his plane and perhaps he could do a barrel roll or side-slip.  He obliged and I was awarded with some better photos (see below).

I also got some decent photos of guys working on their airplanes, joking around, etc.  It was a great day for flying and a super opportunity for photography.  See more photos HERE.