Flying high

Pro aviation photographer Kris Christiaens shares his tips on how to capture airshows....

Mankind has always looked up and wanted to fly. With the advent of civil and military aviation and photography M in the 20th century, it didn't take long for both to be combined, allowing us to capture better than ever the immense power of airplanes and helicopters and the beauty of flight.

Not just for big lenses

Anyone who regularly attends airshows or spotter days and takes pictures during such events will have noticed that a lot of people use huge telephoto lenses, and these tend to be extremely expensive. On one hand, the large lenses do provide you with a lot of millimetres at your disposal, allowing you to get close to the action, but this is still no guarantee for good and beautiful photos. The art of photography is to play and to be inventive with different types of lenses so that you do not always take the same kind of pictures.

When famous formation teams such as the French Patrouille de France or the British Red Arrows put on a show, you can effectively use a wideangle lens to capture the action in its entirety and produce successful photos. If you do still want to take pictures with large zoom lenses such as a 500mm or a 600mm, you can rent them for a few days, making it much more affordable. This will also allow you to experiment with a different focal length and build up more variety in your photography portfolio.

Less is more