single photos Taking Off

When I took this photo, I used centre weighting, to try and reduce the

exposure effect of the sky, and then underexposed by one stop.

Looking at the result, I now feel that I have underexposed the pilot.

Any other comments, on how I could improve another attempt at this.

Faults I have spotted. Horizon not horizontal and image not as sharp

as I would like. This is more from scanning.

Brett....nicely timed shot. I felt that it was underexposed a stop or so too. Had I taken the picture I would have gotten the same result :-) - I tend to bracket where I can, I find I rarely overexpose slide film - more often seems to be underexposed, so bracketing one stop over works most often for me. Alternatively meter from the sky only, or grass, or anything close to 'average grey', lock the exposure, and then recompose with the subject in the shot, may have given a better exposure ?

Other than that, cropping out that peice of ground, or getting more of the ground in the shot might have been better. As it is there's just enough ground to be distracting for me atleast.