Flight Photographers

Greg Davis: I got into aviation photography, primarily

because my family had a military background,

always around aviation.

My grandfather would always take me out

to Bergstrom Air Force Base,

and we'd watch F-4s launch out of the base.

Talk about a wonderful time, as a kid.

Matt Ellis: My introduction to airplanes was my dad.

One of my first memories of

aircraft is being a very small child

and being put in the seat of an F-4.

And I remember looking around, seeing bunches of gauges

and switches and canopy rails.

And, at that point, I was hooked!

As soon as I kind of became aware of airplanes

and knew what a camera was, I wanted

to take pictures of airplanes.

So it's been a lifelong, uh, obsession, really.

I was going to U.T. Arlington, here in this local area,

Arlington, Texas, and I just got bored one day.

So, I went out to Navy-Dallas,

went over there just to watch planes,

as a lot of people do, and I met a group

of people out there that were really cool,

that hung out there, looked like they knew what they were doing.

Didn't have a camera, didn't have anything, but I saw they did

and was watching what they were doing

and said, you know, this-this looks like to be, would be fun.

Better than just watching the planes,

is-is maybe taking pictures.

Jordan Dutton: Growing up because of his hobby.

It-it kind of got me to, I was around aviation a lot,

and then when I was about a sophomore,

maybe a junior in high school, we went out to the DFW Airport

and then he let me use his camera.

And from that day on, I just got hooked.

'cause it was something that I saw my dad do,

it's like, and that's something that I wanted to do.

It was just something that now, me

and him have been doing together for 10 years.

And it's-it's been some of the happiest times

and, you know, to share that with him

and to have all that fun, I just,

it's been great ever since. I've enjoyed it.

My dad took me to my first air show,

I think it was in 1989, at Volkel Air Base.

And that was the 10 year anniversary

of the F-16 in the Dutch Air Force.

And so it was, it was massive, you know, it was so packed

with people, you know, boys and girls,

and, and I was really fascinated by that.

I'm an aerospace engineer, so I love the background

behind the aviation, behind airplanes,

the technology that goes into aviation.

So, to be able to document that,

in a picture, is fulfilling for me.

Eric Coeckelberghs: I got into aviation like at a pretty young age.

I think I was seven or eight, as far as I can remember.

When I saw the Starfighters,

the legendary jets, F-104 fly over my house.

And ever since I captured that image, I knew like,

"Hey, I love airplanes!"

And the best thing you can do

as the photographer in aviation is to go up in the sky,

and catch airplanes in air-to-air photography.

But that was very, very hard

to actually get a chance to do that.

And so, by the time I was a little bit older, I tried

to create that chances myself.

And yeah, it worked, uh, step by step, by step.

My first air-to-air was in 1987

when I had a chance to fly with the Alpi Eagles.

That is an Italian team, flying four Marchettis.

And so they took me flying, during the actual training.

I never heard of G-forces, didn't know what a "looping" was,

but when I looked up and I saw the cows

there in the farm field,

I knew, all right, this is cool!

And I made some - some pretty good pictures.

And ever since 1987 I've been doing it.

Keith Snyder: My dad was a fighter pilot in the Air Force,

and he had a camera at that time.

And so I've always been around airplanes

and just kind of developed the desire to see airplanes

and then, got the camera bug

and, um, kind of caught the disease at that point.

Greg Davis: I got into photography pretty heavily in high school,

loved taking pictures,

did a lot of military stuff, uh, via a friend

that was in the Air National Guard.

And was introduced, uh, fairly early to, uh, one

of the Air Force's top aerial photographers at the time.

His name was Michael James Haggerty.

And he was a photographer for Airman Magazine,

and became a mentor of mine very quickly.

And he showed me what the pros did

and how they did it, not only to make great photos,

but also to do it safely.

He always stressed safety, uh,

which has turned into my mantra as well as I-

I mentor people now.

I joined the Air Force in 1996.

I walked into the recruiter

and said, I want to be an Air Force photographer.

And the recruiter actually laughed at me,

and he said, "Nah, we're kicking people out."

I actually had my portfolio in my truck

and I walked out to my truck and I walked back in

and I said, I don't think you understand.

I wanna be an Air Force photographer.

And I had, uh, about 10 photos that were mounted.

And they were pretty exciting, dynamic stuff.

And I slammed them down on the desk in front

of him in a very cocky, you know,

22-year-old way or whatever it was.

Um, and I said, this is what I do, now.

And the first one was two F-15s going straight up.

So the recruiter looked at my portfolio, and looked up at me

and said, let me make a few phone calls.

And so, he did.

And I had a guarantee in my contract, when I signed up

that "if" I made it through basic training,

and "if" I made it through tech school,

that I could be an Air Force photographer.

So it's been a wild ride.

This was all, uh, grab a camera and try it.

No formal training at all.

I started out with Cannon AE-1 Program film cameras,

which were pretty decent equipment, back in the early '80s and '90s.

And, uh, it was a good platform to learn with.

They were manual cameras, um, manual focus.

And then, uh, entered the digital world about 2012

when I, uh, bought my first Canon 7D.

And that's basically what I'm using now, are 7Ds and Canon lenses.

It's all self-taught. Everything I've done has been

through trial and error, quite a bit

of error when you start, especially, you know, working

with the different types of films.

Slide film was a bit of a-a learning curve for me.

Started out, uh, shooting prints and then going to slides.

Everything was a little bit different

because of the, you know,

the ISO settings and everything else.

But it's through trial and error I became better and better.

And of course, once the digital age hit,

that changes everything as far as the ability

to take many more pictures

and find a couple that are good out of that.

With slide, you couldn't afford to do that.

Dan Dutton: Originally, back in the day, everybody shot with slide film.

Some people would bring out 20 rolls of 36 exposure Kodachrome.

I would have like five rolls

'cause I was a struggling college student.

So, when I took my shots, it was usually of a static nature.

And the sunlight had to be really good,

usually early morning shots, that sort of stuff on the ramp.

Didn't catch a whole lot other than

maybe a landing shot of stuff.

So as things progressed, digital comes into play.

Then I got to be more of a, uh, creative photographer in that respect,

because I could deal with the settings post,

you know, production type stuff.

And so it took a lot more chances, got better lenses,

so I was able to shoot more of the plane, the aesthetics

of the aircraft, the lighting, that sort of stuff.

So a lot of the courses I've taken in terms of photography,

have been along those lines with like, Photoshop,

things like that, to be able to draw that contrast out.

So, used to be a backlit,

throw it in the trash can, now backlit,

no, I'll take something with that, make something pretty out of that,

nice and aesthetically pleasing.

So that's kind of the difference between then and now.

Eric Coeckelberghs: The old

but everything was manual.

The good thing is, you learn how to take pictures really well!

And you have a maximum 36 exposures.

So when I was still using that camera, for every 36 exposures,

I had at least 25 really good photos!

And strangely enough, even today, with the gun mode,

I still do, like: I aim, I still do like, "chick, chick, chick, chick."

While other guys take 50 pictures,

I take like five or six!

Switching from, uh, film or slides to digital,

uh, I've-I've noticed that I shoot a lot more!

So when I was shooting film, of course, it was expensive,

especially for, you know, like a 14 or 15-year-old, right?

So, going to digital, it was so much easier, you know,

to just shoot everything that you see.

And then when you come home

and uh, you didn't like something, you know,

you just delete it, you know, and move on.

No, uh, no harm, no foul.

To me, that's the fun part of photographing with aviation is,

especially on the military side,

is, it's just like hunting.

When you go sitting in the stand,

you don't know what you're gonna see.

It could be nothing at all, to everything flying in the day.

And, you know, I'm just looking, sometimes I'm just looking