This is a photo I took on a USAir flight from Los Angeles to Phoenix. We had just leveled out at 30,000 feet over the Mojave Desert in Nevada. The light was luminous with a deep blue sky contrasting with the desert below a stark graphic of broad valleys and dry barren mountains receeding into a haze. Since the flight was uncrowded I checked several windows to find the clearest window. Then it was just a matter of composing the frame as we cruised along at 600 mph.
When I fly on commercial flights I usually book a window seat. Sometimes I even check Google Earth to figure out which side of the plane will have the best views. I find most mid-day flights offer a photographer bland flat light, but this was not the case on this uncrowded evening flight. Nikon D-300s with a 35mm 1.8 lens. camera settings were 1000 sec f7 iso 200
Nice work. Did you use a certain filter in front of your lens ?
Posted by: AmirAli | March 02, 2011 at 11:11 AM
I used a couple of filters. We were flying at 30,000 feet so I wanted the final photo to look like what I have seen standing on the summit of a really high mountan like Denali, where the sky is a deep blue and almost black. First I processed the photo through the software Camerabag using the lens filter 1974. I then warmed up the desert floor using the selective tool in Nik Vivezia2 plugin for Photoshop. The result is what I think the Mojave would look like if you were standing on the icy summit of Everst.
Posted by: Bill | March 02, 2011 at 01:07 PM