Here are a few shots taken from a small private plane at night over downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood. It was a really fun trip and an interesting experience, the pilot Fei, was great and very accommodating. We were in a Piper Cherokee, which is a low wing plane, so that meant we had to roll the aircraft for me to get a shot without the wing in the way. You can see it in a few shots. The night was rather pleasant and we took off from El Monte airport. This was on Friday night, May 20, 2011. I have to say this was extremely difficult photography, the subject is dark with a some really bright highlights, the plane is moving at about 100mph and was constantly moving (which was a good thing for a fixed wing plane!). So I had a lot of images that showed rotation, and also movement. Shots were taken with a 21mm f2.8, 85mm f1.8 and a 50mm f1.4, all wide open and very high ISO, which varied depending on the overall brightness, even with the fast lenses and high ISO it was tough to get the shutter speed high enough to not show motion blur. This is something I definitely want to try again and I think I will have a lot better success. Some of the shots, especially the close ups over the building reminded me of ‘Blade Runner’. Click on any thumbnail to see a larger version, thanks for looking!
