Welcome.

I debated long and hard about this post.  I almost didn’t follow through with.  The problem is It reflects lack of preparation, not having the right equipment with me, and not properly preparing for the type of photo shoot.

I have photographed this event 20 times before and had a fair amount of success with the shoot.  This time however I did not build on that past experience.  While I was taking images of my grand kids (much more important event) I heard and saw the war birds flying over.  Then I remembered this was the weekend that they practice for the big air show in Oshkosh.

So without stopping at home to pick up my long lens and my normal camera, I just drove out to the airport.  There was nothing flying when I arrived so I didn’t know which runway they were going to use or where they might be staging or for that matter if they were going to fly at all.

So when they did finally start taking off it was obvious to me that I was in the wrong place and that all I could do was to try to get some shots as they got airborne.

They were pretty close to being out of the range of the lens I had and to make matters worse I’m still trying to learn this new system.  Not to mention that my panning with a long lens is woefully pathetic.

The final blow was looking at a guy I know, who obviously did his home work and is very familiar with his set up and his equipment.  His images were stunning.

I’m not looking for sympathy, it was a hard lesson to learn but I won’t make that mistake again.

Enjoy the rest of your day and be careful.