single photos Spitfire at Geneseo

I kind of liked the clouds gathering in front of this MkIX - kind of

foreboding, and since so many of the airplane photos I take kind of

look the same (hey, look - its an airplane in a field...), I was

pleased to get this shot. I am just annoyed that the image looks

kind of grey on the screen - it seems to have lost a lot of the

highlights and deep blacks, but I guess that's the nature of the

beast. And of course I wish that second antena wasn't there - but

what can one do:)

Your comments are welcome, and as always, appreciated. Enjoy.

Not the sharpest pic I've seen, but a nice image. The fin and tail make a nice partial frame. Cheers, Alex

Thanks, I was trying to be selective with the focus to draw the eye into the shot... but I don't think I quite nailed it...

This picture disturbs me. The most dominant line in the composition is the edge of the fuselage spine, but that line looks lumpy and uneven. It seems to go straight for the first half of its length back from the canopy, then kink downards, and then kink upwards again toward the tail. Not the nice fuselage profile that we are used to seeing. Then there is the matter of the cross-section of the fuselage. I don't mind the second aerial in itself, but the shadow that it casts creates the illusion that there is a crease running lengthwise down the spine of the fuselage offset to the right. And then, the gaps or overlaps between the panels that run radially around the fuselage appear uneven (some darker and thicker than others). It is also apparent that the grey and green of the paint scheme have differing sheens which accentuates the feeling of unevenness; the greater sheen on the part of the fuselage near the canopy makes it look rounder, and the more matte paint further aft (which, by unlucky coincidence, is also where the aerial shadow falls) makes it look flat.

 

The result is not the Spitfire we all know. Someone unfamiliar with Spitfires who studied this photo could be excused for thinking that the Spitfire was an unattractively designed airplane assembled with indifferent quality control, especially because no other pretty parts of the aircraft are shown to counterbalance what I've pointed to. Indeed, until I made out the code letters on the side, I thought that this might be a picture of one of those T.9 models with the front cockpit moved forward (the perspective of the photo creates that illusion anyway) and a patch-job on the rear fuselage to cover the aft cockpit.

 

So what happened here? Part of it is that because of tricks of light and shade, the camera is lying. (Aerial shadow; paint sheen.) The crooked fuselage line is not so easy to excuse. Sometimes this type of thing is an artifact of resizing a picture. Could it also be that Peter has shown us something true about the Spitfire that we'd rather not have known? Has Peter actually found a way to shoot a Spitfire so that it looks ugly? That would be a rare distinction but, I'm sure, not one that Peter sought!

 

 

i like it ,it may not be perfect ,it was built to do a job and not expected to have a long service life,may even have been repaired several times,people kept trying to shoot holes in them.the differing paint finnishes definately draw your eye.Nice shot peter

 

Cheers Duncan

Yes, I don't blame Peter for what happened, it just seems to me that a fluke of light, shadow, and angle got together to distort what he was trying to show. It would have been almost impossible to see this looking through the viewfinder. Black and white, I'm afraid, compounds the problem.

 

The composition is fine though and I especially like the way the white stripe in the fin flash is used as a framing device with both ends of it just within the top and bottom of the picture.

 

August, I see your points - I have to admit that they were not apparent to me when I took this shot, or for that matter, until you pointed them out.

 

You do understand that I will now have to commit ritual suicide, right? Taking an ugly picture of a Spitfire would require that, I am afraid... :)

 

The secong aerial disturbs me not for its visual aspects but for the fact that is simply doesn't belong there, but I see the visual impact you mention. Its too bad - I was actually pretty happy with this shot. Perhaps I can attribute that to a couple of things:

 

a) I loved the clouds and the way the gathered seemingly in front of the airplane

 

b) Perhaps I can not be critical of a Spitfire image even if its my own :)

 

Thanks for the input August, either way, I appreciate it.

 

And Duncan, thanks for the kind words.

Peter - no need for suicide (yet). I like your pic and would suggest that, indeed, your talent has well started!! Your portfolio more than backs this view up, incidentally.

 

Duncan may well be right about the hard life and times of operational a/c - we had some Shacks that were so twisted even a pilot could fly them straight.

 

A quick session with PS has put to rest August's (master nitpicker) comments and the result is noted below. I know some will throw up their hands in horror at such adulteration - but maybe it does look better, what do you think.

Thank you for your kind words, I really appreciate your up lifting words! You know I am a little bit of a film snob... (ok... I am pretty much a die-hard luddite:-)), but you know... I am also a Spitfire purist - and as such, that "bleeding earial" making the Spit look like a cat-detector van is well served by some wizardry, and I like the results. My desire for a clean and proper Spit outweighs my film snobbery:-)

Now... this was scanned from print - as everything in my portfolio is... so I will have to spend some long hours in the darkroom trying to replicate that result. But oh well - it will be fun (aside from the countless sheets of paper I will destroy and new obscenities that I will inevitably invent!)and in the end, I will have learned something, so it won't be all bad.

Thanks for being so encouraging, I really appreciate it. While airplanes are my first love, they are not really my photographic forte - I photograph them because I love them and I can't help it - so I am always grateful for the time folks take to chime in.

Peter, one more thought -- as to your term "inaccurately painted" in the caption of your drugstore pic -- my understanding is that the paint scheme on this aircraft is not only accurate, but authentic to this particular airframe. Do you have different info?

 

I didn't mean to be a downer on this pic; you know I like your stuff generally; but I don't think I'm picking nits, a lot of little stuff happened to go wrong in this picture and the overall impression, trying to look at it with fresh and non-Spitfire-influenced eyes, went sour. Bad luck really.

August - please don't misunderstand - I appreciate your input, and I know you won't like every picture I take, in which case I certainly prefer to hear your take on it than to have you pass on stating your views for fear of hurting my feelings. You put a lot of thought into and shed a great deal of unique perspective in your posts, and I am certainly not taking the time and effort for granted - even if I don't agree with everything you say every time, I usually get something out of each of your posts that I am sure will make my next shot better. So no worries.

 

As to that MkIX... I spent a better part of my youth and most of my adulthood pouring over paint chips, photos, matching colours (I have gone as far as getting the input of veterans who flew some of these planes)and researching everything down to the varying degrees that exposure to sun changes the colour of a particular paint (I won't even go into the debate of how scale affects the human perception of colour). The underside of this airplane is too dark, the dark sea grey is off as well and sky band across the rear fuselage is well, it is what it is. I also can't recall a Spitfire of this vintage with a red spinner, although I can't rule out that it has happened. Plus, the variance in sheen between the two colours is also not something I have ever seen in many of the war time photos I have studied (excluding patch jobs and repairs). Hence my verdict on the paint scheme, and it would take a lot of convincing to change my mind:)

Peter, I won't try to persuade you about the colors although I have seen this bird and they look pretty good to me; I also have the modeler's anal retentiveness about color shades. The only point I will make is that Spitfires in the Mediterranean, including the later variants in grey/green camo, frequently had red spinners and this one is painted as it was when serving in Greece and Yugoslavia. At the following link you can see some old pictures of this aircraft, including a color shot of this airplane from a rare color wartime documentary showing that it had a red spinner, although at that time it was with a different unit and had different call letters. From the b&w pic of it in Greece as GZ-? it seems clear that it still had the red nose then.

 

http://www.fighterfactory.com/airplane-gallery/spitfire-historic-photos.php

 

Well spotted - Mediterrenean, red spinners - my oversight. But where they in conjunction with the regular grey/green/grey paint scheme? Having said that, the airplane that started as an LF and was restored with a regular c wing... I don't think that the colours are what I would call accurate, but at least they added a proper aerial mast which seems absent from the original restoration. I suppose the any quibles about the paint are minor when its not even the same variant as the one it started life as. I wonder what else is there - an LF was not just clipped wing tips. At what point can you still say its "the same airframe"?

As to the history of the airframe,not to bothered where it came from,its a spit and i assume still flying.Good enough for me.Cheers Duncan

What I like most in this photo is the angle. Naver seen a plane picture that way. Very creative. Seems almost to put me inside the plane.

6/6

Regards