STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO: SOUTHERN CROSS C-47

There are few things worse than getting ready to head to the airport and being notified that your flight has been cancelled. However, in some circumstances it ends up working out really well!

In December of 2018 I caught wind of a local photography event called Fort Worth Foto Fest that is hosted annually in May by Fort Worth Camera. Throughout the event, there are several gatherings held that present photographers with opportunities to try out different aspects that maybe they haven’t had a chance to give a try. For me, the flight on the Greatest Generation Aircraft C-47 Skytrain named Southern Cross immediately caught my eye.

Lucky for me, my wife was awesome and took a mental note of how incredible I thought trying aerial photography in a Warbird would be. A few months later Valentine ’s Day came around and I got a huge surprise: a ticket for the Fort Worth Foto Fest Aerial Photography event.

After waiting nearly three months, the day of the flight finally came. I could not wait to make my way to the airport. I had all of my camera gear packed in a backpack including my brand new Nikon Z6 that I had just received for my birthday when I received a phone call. Due to a maintenance concern, the Southern Cross would not be able to fly.

Understandably I was bummed, but they promised the flight would still happen at a later date and on top of that, Greatest Generation Aircraft went above and beyond and offered to let the group of photographers still come out to the airfield to take photos of the plane. I went back and forth for a little bit on what to do, but ultimately decided to make the best of the opportunity and go out to see the plane up close. This could not have been a better decision.

Upon getting to the field, I wasn’t really sure how to approach photographing the aircraft. I had seen many photos of C-47s; most notably the one that sits in a field in Kansas and another one that famously crash landed in Iceland and is still sitting on the beach. I wanted to try out some of the angles I commonly saw, but also experiment with angles that provided depth in the photo to show the size of the aircraft.

I quickly learned that I was going to need to use a wide angle lens to accomplish the photos I wanted to capture. After walking around the Southern Cross a little bit taking photos as I saw fit, I realized there were two things that I enjoyed about it: the World War Two Era nose art and the massive propellers. After playing with the idea, I finally landed on one of my favorite photos I’ve taken to date.

Looking back, I think that day sums up photography very well. Through it, I have learned to take advantage of opportunities I wouldn’t normally be interested in and I was able to apply knowledge learned through my love of landscape photography to a large object. Had I passed on the opportunity given to photograph a large aircraft on the ground, I probably wouldn’t have known what I would have missed, but I for sure know I wouldn’t have an incredible photo of a C-47 in my portfolio.

Let me know in the comments what you think of the photo! Are there any times with photography that you’ve regretted not going out to shoot or times that you went even though it wasn’t ideal and it turned out to be amazing?