02Pete

Thanks for posting this photo!  That looks like a Lotus 6, the predecessor of the Lotus 7 (and Caterham, Westfield, Donkervoort, Birkin et al.).  Nice to see one of these still running.  The wobbly-web wheels are an added bonus.  Judging from the tilt of the driver's head and the blurred tire tread, this was turning at speed when you took this photo, so nice job framing it so tightly and getting the image so sharp.

That's quite a photo!  Knowledge of one's equipment, photographic technique and composition are not sufficient, without more, to take such a photo.  Knowledge of the local area, patience and persistence in waiting for the right season and weather, and a willingness to get very early, get set up in advance, and be ready when just the right light appears for a brief time, are also necessary.  You've done an exceptional job with this one -- nice work!

Glad you like the photo.  The event was an International Vintage Soaring Meet (IVSM) held at the National Soaring Museum (NSM) on Harris Hill in Horseheads, NY in 2005.  Pilots from all over the US, and from some foreign countries, bring older sailplanes to these meets for display and non-competitive recreational flying.  One of these IVSM events is scheduled to be held at the NSM from July 9 to July 16 this year (2016).

 If you're interested in seeing more of my sailplane photos, you can find them here:
http://photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=526024
http://photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=518565

Excellent composition, use of indirect daylight, use of shallow depth of field -- and a very photogenic subject, presented simply and modestly but with a clear sense of youth, innocence, intelligence, personality and warmth.  This is an excellent photo, far richer than many made using complex studio equipment and greater artifice.  If this young woman is a member of your family, your true reward for this photo will not be in whether it wins a contest, but rather in having an image of great personal value in years to come.  A photo for you to take pride in, and also to be thankful for -- very nicely done indeed.

The direct gaze of your subject, Sudatta, gives this portrait a clear sense of presence.  She looks intelligent and an interesting person, as well as attractive.  Her stance and clothing, and the setting, are informal, casual and relaxed, which gives this a comfortable feeling.  If she is your wife, or someone close to you, this is a photo you will probably want to keep around for a long time, and it may take on greater meaning the longer you have it.

This photo is well illuminated, the shadows sufficient to provide a sense of dimensionality without being harsh. It makes good use of the focal length of the lens, close enough to fill most of the frame with her image and provide some detail, but far enough away to afford a very natural sense of perspective.

This photo is good (indeed, it would require real effort to take a bad photo of someone who looks like this), and I have no criticisms to offer, but please allow me to suggest some things you might consider experimenting with in future photos, to see whether you like the results:

• For a waist-up or head-and-shoulders portrait emphasizing her face, either move closer to your subject, or use a lens with a somewhat longer focal length.
• Try using a "rule of thirds" approach to put her face about one-third of the way from one edge or the other, rather than in the middle, and about one-third of the way down from the top of the frame.  This may provide a slightly more dynamic feel than a photo with the subject squarely in the middle of the frame.
• For a portrait emphasizing the profile of her face, try asking her to stand with her shoulders and face at an angle to the camera, rather than facing directly head-on toward the camera, and to turn her eyes rather than her face or shoulders toward the camera.
• Try asking her to stand with her body facing partly away from you, and looking back over her shoulder at you.
• If you are shooting in the same location, shift the composition of the photo a bit to the left, so that most of what you see around her is plain wall or curtain in the background, rather than tiles or other things in the same plane of focus as her face, which might tend to draw attention away from her face.  Compose so that you exclude possible distractions.
• If your camera has an aperture-priority setting, or if you can set the exposure manually, try setting the lens to maximum aperture (for this lens, f/1.8), or just a stop or two down from maximum aperture (for this lens, f/2.8 or f/4).  Adjust the ISO setting as necessary to get proper exposure at that aperture with a shutter speed of at least 1/125.  If you can switch your lens to manual focus,  get closer to your subject, and focus on her eyes (or, if you can't get them both in focus at the same time, on the eye nearer to the camera).  Since a lens has shallower depth of field at larger apertures, this will keep her eyes in sharp focus while leaving the background behind her out of focus.  The purpose is to draw the viewer's attention to her face, particularly her eyes, and away from the background, giving the photo a greater sense of dimensionality and presence.
• This photo has a light background providing good, clear tonal separation between her hair and what is behind her.  If you take future pictures of her against a dark background providing less tonal separation, try placing a light behind her (but not within the picture) to put some highlights in the edges of her hair and make it stand out from the background.

An additional suggestion, which doesn't involve technique but may be worth keeping in mind:  If your subject is your wife, a member of your immediate family, or a close friend, rather than a professional model, keep your photo sessions relatively brief, and don't try too many things at once.  She may not find posing as interesting as you find taking pictures.  You want her to remain willing to pose for more photos in the future, rather than getting so annoyed with the process that she prefers to avoid it.

One learns in time to appreciate the good days in life, of which this appears to be one.

This beautifully lit portrait emphasizes this woman's femininity while respecting her dignity.

This is quite a good shot, and I like it.  No need to apologize for equipment, location, or the quality of the result.  There's nothing wrong with a Nikkor 85mm f/2 AiS -- while not among the most complex, expensive, or "professional" lenses marketed by Nikon, it was a decent and perfectly serviceable lens capable of delivering solid results (as your photograph illustrates convincingly).   It was also the right focal length to capture most of the cu-nim you chose to photograph, including the spreading anvil top which results when air made buoyant by temperature and pressure differential final attains an altitude of equilibrium, at which point it can no longer go upwards and, as displaced by more rising air, can only move sideways.  Had you been able to reach a point from which you could shoot between the strands of the barbed-wire fence rather than including one of those strands in the image area, that might have been advantageous; but as I was not there and do not know what physical constraints were posed by the location from which you were shooting, it would be unfair for me to criticize the image on that account.  It appears that, when confronted with a relatively brief phenomenon and working with what may not have been your favorite equipment, you managed to capture a striking image of a powerful late-day thunderstorm.  That was an accomplishment, and the image you now offer us is evocative of its size and power.  It's a very good photo, and there should be justifiable pride for you in having taken it.

A friend and soaring pilot, Jeffrey Stringer, has helped me to identify the sailplane in your picture. The information which follows comes from several Wikipedia articles, the links to which are provided below. 

The sailplane is the Stanley Nomad, completed in 1938 by engineer and aviator Robert M. Stanley (1912-1977).  Both the aircraft and the pilot have interesting histories.

Stanley designed and built the Nomad between 1935 and 1938, in the basement of a house in San Diego that he shared with others while serving as an Ensign in the US Navy assigned to the aircraft carrier Lexington. It was a high performance sailplane for its time. The fuselage was an aluminum monocoque.  The wings, with a wingspan of 57 ft. (17.37 m) and an aspect ratio of 18.5:1, and the empennage (tail), were built of wood with fabric covering.    The wings used airfoil sections developed by the National Advisory Commission on Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).  For those having a background in soaring, the Nomad had a wing loading of 3.1 lb./sq. ft. (15kg/sq. meter); a minimum sink rate of 174 ft./min.  (2.9 ft./sec., or 0.88 m/s) at 41 mph (66 km/h); and a maximum lift to drag ratio (L/D), or glide ratio, of 27:1 at 44 mph (71 km/h).

During the US Soaring Nationals at Elmira, NY in 1939, flying the Nomad, Stanley earned the first FAI Gold Badge, the first American pilot ever to do so; set US national altitude records on two successive days, climbing to 16,400 feet (4,99 meters) on July 3, 1939 and to 17,284 feet (5,268 meters) on July 4, 1939; and finished second in the contest even after failing to complete the final day's task.  During the following year, 1940, he served as the national President of the Soaring Society of America (SSA), a group which is still in existence and active today.

During WWII, Stanley worked as the chief test pilot for Bell Aircraft Corp.  On October 2, 1942, he was at the controls when the Bell XP-59A Airacomet, the first jet aircraft designed and built in the US, became airborne during a high-speed taxi test.  That flight was made at Muroc Dry Lake in California, which would later become known as Edwards Air Force Base. 

Stanley was Bell's Engineering Vice President when the firm designed the Bell X-1 in 1944, built it in 1945, and first test-flew it in 1946.  He also developed the concept of launching an experimental aircraft from another aircraft at high altitude.  On October 14, 1947, flown by test pilot Chuck Yeager, the X-1 became the first aircraft ever to break the sound barrier. 

He later founded Stanley Aviation, a company which designed and built ejection seats for jet aircraft.  His firm provided the ejection seats used in the B-47, B-52, F-104, F-106A, and the F4H Phantom, and the ejection capsules used in the Convair B-58 Hustler supersonic bomber and the XP-70 Valkyrie experimental supersonic bomber.  Sadly, he died in 1977 when the plane he was flying on a vacation trip was caught by a powerful wind shear while landing.  His widow, Katherine Stanley, donated the Nomad to the National Air and Space Museum the following year, in 1978. 

To sum up, this isn't just a good photo of a sailplane with an interesting history.  It also evokes the memory of its designer and builder, Robert Stanley, an engineer and pilot who subsequently worked on the Bell XP-59A (first US-built jet) and the Bell X-1 (first aircraft to break the sound barrier), and later founded a company which built ejection seats for military jets.

Links to related Wikipedia articles:

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Nomad 

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Stanley

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_XP-59A_Airacomet 

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_X-1 

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Aviation

     http://www.ejectionsite.com/stanley/

A well-composed, effective and attractive portrait, making good use of natural light.  The hood suggests cold, but her face radiates warmth.  Good one!

A very effective composition and photo.  Nice high-key background, too -- one doesn't often find hangars that well-lit.

This particular sailplane is such a gorgeous piece of work!  By the registration numbers, the technologies employed in both the wings and fuselage, and the general configuration of the wings, fuselage and empennage, this appears to be an American sailplane, possibly from the late 1930s but more probably from the late 1940s or early 1950s.  It would have been quite a high performance sailplane for its time, with an L/D ratio perhaps in the high 20s or low 30s, say somewhere between 27:1 and 32:1. 

I'd love to know who designed and built this, and who flew it.  In certain ways, it looks a good deal like a Harland Ross design (the fuselage looks somewhat like his famous RS-1 "Zanonia"), although most of his designs used aircraft-grade plywood rather than aluminum.   This was not a sailplane for novices -- the handling characteristics might have been a bit tricky at the margins.  Perhaps the National Soaring Museum on Harris Hill in Horseheads near Elmira, NY could identify it from their archives. 

Sailplanes are mostly made our of carbon fiber and fiberglass these days.  While they have gained a good deal in performance, they have also lost a great deal in individuality and character.  It is sad to see this beautiful aircraft hanging on wires from the rafters of a museum hangar, rather than still being kept airworthy and flown.  It's like seeing a Stradivarius violin inside a display case in a museum, no longer played.

Looks as thought these engines are on a Lockheed Constellation, or perhaps an old DC-6 or DC-7.   Double-row radial engines such as those were reputedly a bear to maintain, and finicky to coax into synchronization once airborne, but they represented the adaptation for civilian use of technologies previously developed for military purposes, and they delivered performance that was quite high for their time.  If one is lucky enough to see and hear an aircraft of this type start its engines, taxi out and take off, or even just fly overhead, one never forgets that distinctive sound.  Definitely worth remembering, and your well-composed and rather elegant photo does a good job of aiding the recall of such memories.

Admittedly, not the highest technical quality -- but if you look and

listen carefully, can you hear the sound? That's Ken Yamazaki on

percussion, playing in a quartet performing Free Jazz in New York.

A. is currently helping to conduct a public health study, based at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, of ways to reduce infant mortality in underserved populations.

This fanciful trombone has a bell in the shape of a painted bird's head.  One wonders what effect the shape of this bell might have had on the sound produced by the instrument.  Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Unlike conventional modern trombones, this one has a bell which would have sounder backward over the player's shoulder -- perhaps to make a military marching band more audible to soldiers marching behind it.  Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Modern ceramic art on display in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.  The artist's sense of humor is evident in the skinny bottle, which  appears to be a wry comment on the "Diet Cola" label, especially in light of the Dagwood sandwich next to it.

Modern glass art on display in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Modern glass art on display in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

This original C.F. Martin guitar from 1840 is on display in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.  The C.F. Martin company, owned by the founder's descendants, is still in business in Nazareth, PA.  The lyre-style headstock is a visual forerunner of the six-in-line headstocks later used by Fender electric guitars built from the 1940s on, a century later.

The USS Constitution vs. HMS Guerriere, War of 1812.  Cannonballs fired at a grazing angle ricocheted off the strong oaken hull of the USS Constitution during this engagement, in which the ship dismasted HMS Guerriere.  More than 200 years later, USS Constitution still floats in Boston Harbor, her nickname a reminder of the US Navy of wooden ships and iron men.

This photo was taken by Joanne Shawhan in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  This shows details of the ornamentation on the helmet of a mounted Samurai warrior.

This mounted Samurai warrior must have held high rank, judging from the dragon ornamentation on his helmet.  Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

This pedestrian sculpture, evidently taking a walk in jeans and a t-shirt even on a drizzly day, crosses over the entrance to the parking lot of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

This photo was taken by Joanne Shawhan in the Boston Public Gardens.