These Composites of Aircrafts Taking Off as well as Landing Show How Connected the World Is

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When did you start this project? What inspired you to do it?

I’m actually an architectural photographer by trade, and in that line of work I’m doing a lot of compositing: blending lighting, time of day, and people, as I photograph builds. Believe it or not, architectural photography requires a lot of photoshop in many instances, so I’ve been working with photo composites for years now in order to give my photos an interesting seem and feel.

So that brings us to the original image from LAX, conceived in 2014. I’ve always been fascinated by aviation and one day while out at LAX plane spotting, decided that I wanted to try capturing multiple takeoffs and putting them together into a single image to demonstrate their flight paths and the sheer volume of traffic departing LAX. The crazy thing is that the first image was originally supposed to only has become a proof-of-concept to see if the idea had any leg. I set it on the internet as kind of a “hey, check this little thing out that I did, it’s kind of cool” and it just ran crazy viral.

The inspiration behind the entire situate of images was somewhat simple given the success of the original. I didn’t want to be a one-hit wonder, and I knew the idea had potential, so it was sort of something that had to be done. There are a ton of amazing airports, airlines, and airliners out there that I wanted to photo, so the scheme was set in motion to try and capture as many as possible. Since I’m obsessed with aircrafts, travel, and watching new places, it was also a great excuse to get me out of my convenience zone a little bit. At the time I started the project, I had been photographing architecture for about five years straight-out and a breach was in order, so it was also a nice change of pace!

I mostly selected airports on the basis of their setting or how iconic they are on a global scale. Heathrow is obviously one of the most well-known, for better or worse, airports in the world, set in the middle of what is probably the most famous city on ground. Haneda is the busiest airport in the world, and you can see the iconic Mt Fuji on a perfect day- I wanted to tie these amazing locatings together with their air traffic in a way that hadn’t been ensure before.

What were the biggest challenges?

Oh man- definitely the post processing. The creation of the images takes some concentration, but I wouldn’t consider it a challenge- certainly frustrating at phases, especially when you take a trip somewhere for a photo that doesn’t materialize, but always an adventure. But the post processing- I genuinely had to get into the zone. Some of these images took months to put together. Mind you, I wasn’t running straight through, but it was a couple hours a day, followed by a break to let my eyes re-adjust, followed by more tweaking. And I’d always miss something- like a rushed mask or imperfect clone which I had to go back and fix, and some of the documents are over 10 gb in size. So it was a very slow, very frustrating process at times.

Give us a memorable experience from the project

There was more than one occasion where I virtually didn’t get the shot due to weather or breeze not cooperating. As I mentioned above, considering Mt Fuji seem- when it was so integral to the shot and so rare to see- was unbelievable. It took two trip-ups to Japan, the second of which was booked the day before I left, so it was a huge gamble to have everything come together. In addition, I had to take three journeys to London to get the shots I wanted because the weather there is so incredibly fickle. When it all comes together it’s just amazing- and you wake up and the wind is blowing the right direction, the clouds are great, and all of these interesting aircraft from far-flung corners of the globe are taking off in front of you. There’s a lot of moving pieces and getting them to fall into place was just great.

How long is the process of making one of the composites?

It truly differed between shots. The first one at LAX attained everything super easy for me- with an observation point that had a perfect view of the airport and the sun in the perfect spot throughout an entire day. Not the case at every airport! So the first thing I had to do, was in some cases, literally spend days driving and walking around perimeter roads to find the best spot, which is often uncharted province. Even though plane spotting is pretty popular, I had to look a bit past the well-known or designated spots to find a location that would work well. It was really important that I is not merely capture the planes but the spirit of each locating- so for example, in Amsterdam I wanted to capture the lowlands and canals, and in Germany I tried to capture iconic things like the autobahn. Sydney, the beaches, etc. In addition to wanting to incorporate some local flavor, I had to make sure that the place I selected had the sun behind my back for the entire day so that the illuminating would be even for the purposes of the chosen time period, so this greatly limited my options. In a few cases I opted to shoot early in the morning to capture' rush hour’ at some of the more busy airports, e.g. Dubai and Heathrow. While it constructs for a dramatic photo the sunshine slant and colourings are changing very quickly at that time of day, so these photos merely captured a few hours at most before the sun constructed it impossible to continue shooting. So the first step of determining a spot was really tough!

After I observed a place, I had to wait for a day where the winds, weather, and illuminated all collaborated. Since airplanes usually take off into the wind, this meant waiting for a day that had steady winds in the direction that worked best with my choose spot. If the winds switched halfway through the working day, the entire day would be a washing. Similarly, if the climate changed dramatically throughout the day, it also made it exponentially harder to composite the images together as the coloring, lighting, and exposure on all sectors of scene changed with cloud cover and sunshine. The Frankfurt images for example were both ridiculous in the amount of day I expended compositing them, perfectly matching exposure, sunlight, cloud cover, and so on, to keep things looking realistic. So the ideal situation was a great place proving the planes, some local flavor, the sun behind me( or consistent cloud cover) and solid, steady wind for an entire day. Easy in a place like LA where it’s always sunny. In a place like London? You gotta be kidding me, right? It actually took three trip-ups to London to get images I was happy with because the constantly shifting weather and breezes. Same with Tokyo. Turns out they’re not lying when they say Mt Fuji is a fickle, fickle beast. It’s only visible on the clearest of days, so I had to take 2 trips to Japan to get the image I wanted.

Once I had my spot and the weather and everything else in place, it was time to shoot the pictures. This was just as simple as putting the camera on a tripod and capturing every aircraft as it crossed through the viewfinder.

Post production was also pretty lengthy for each shot. I’d select a background plate, and then stack all of the images with aircraft masked out on top of the base layer. I’d then remove or add the planes one at a time. For each airplane that you see in the final images, I actually had 10 -1 5 shots of each as it passed from left-to-right through the frame( or right to left, etc ), and I selected the best image of each airliner depending on how it fit best in the frame. It was important to me that I maintain everything realistic whenever possible, so I wanted to have as many options as possible to make sure I could dedicate each image movement and colour. Kind of hard to explain in text, but it was very tedious! After I had all my airplanes in place, it was a matter of matching the brightness, color, and doing global adjustments like colour grading and contrast. Some of the Photoshop files have hundreds of layers to make this possible. I suppose a few of the files were anywhere from 12 -1 6gb in size.

Favorite place visited?

I would say Tokyo was my favorite new place- it’s simply such its own experience! The food, the transit, the illuminates and bustle of the city. Merely amazing to take it all in or watch it go by. In order to get the shot of Haneda, I had to charter a fishing boat, which picked me up at around 4am. We drove out over the glassy water of Tokyo Bay and is not merely did I consider the quintessential rising sunlight coming up right in front of us, but watching Mt Fuji emerge in the distance on that clear and soothe morning was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. Just an wholly surreal experience to be out there in a 14 foot barge bobbing around the working day. There’s also a special place in my heart for New Zealand- I have always was of the view that I’ll retire there. The landscape is truly just majestic and I know it’s clichA( c) to say this, but I’ve never met a kinder bunch of people.

What airport would you like to shoot next?

I’d love to do some more in Asia- Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, that sort of thing. Maybe even Russia, as they have some amazingly interesting aircrafts. I’d love to work with some of these airports to make it happen, or get person on the ground who can help me, as they’d be a huge undertaking in terms of visas and access. But the diversity of aircraft and scenery would be incredible.

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