The advent of high-quality camera phones has made it significantly easier for pilots to capture stunning photographs during their flights, offering a new glimpse into aerial beauty.
The article showcases the winners and finalists of the "Wingtip Wonders" photo contest, celebrating the unique perspectives and beautiful imagery shared by pilots.
Entries were captured using a variety of devices, including camera phones (iPhone, Google Pixel), GoPros, and professional cameras, highlighting the diverse ways pilots document their experiences.
Pilots have always been able to take photographs as they were flying, but it wasn’t easy, and it was, at times, questionably smart. But the advent of the camera phone (along with the meteoric rise in its ability to capture not good but great photographs) has allowed pilots to snap away. The results are wonderful, as you will see—a window into the flights that our friends make, a glimpse of the beauty that formerly we could only describe, which was always a poor substitute. So, to all who entered our Wingtip Wonders photo contest, thank you! And to our finalists and winners, thanks, and congratulations!
Jan Johnson got this image, called Summer Evening Over San Francisco Bay, with the beautiful wing of a Douglas C-41A (a DC-3 variant) serving as foreground. The C-41 is the sole survivor of its type and was used as a personal transport for Major General Hap Arnold. Johnson used an iPhone 7 Plus to get the shot.Amanda Aldea made this photograph from this Diamond DA40 near Charleston, South Carolina, at sunset when she captured this striking image of the sunâs rays reaching over the horizon. Taken with an iPhone.Daniel Spitzer snapped this shot, entitled Shadow Self Portrait in Flight. Spitzer positioned his Liberty XL-2 with the Hudson River Valley and Shawangunk Mountains for a background on one of the shortest days of the year. Canon Powershot G10.David Prasek captured this remote shot from a camera mounted on the wingtip of this pretty Cessna 172 RG Cutlass over Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. About the shot, Prasek wrote, âI recently purchased a GoPro and exterior camera mounts. I was looking for new and creative angles to update our website media. I had never seen photos taken from this point of view, and I thought it would be unique. I used this format on several other airplanes in various backdrops, but this one stands out. Harpers Ferry makes the perfect backdrop for us flying in the Frederick area. I was lucky to time the flight to maximize the natural light and show the landscape and the playful paint scheme of the Cessna 172 Cutlass.â GoPro HERO9 Black; fixed lens with NFlightCam exterior ballhead mount; Apple iPhone 11 with GoPro mobile app for remote control. 1/1000 sec; f/2.5; ISO 156.Our third-place photo is from Greg Pfeil, who captured this shot, entitled âContrails, Contrails and More Contrails,â while on a flight from Miami to San Antonio. He wrote, âThe weather conditions were such that it seemed every plane in every direction for hundreds of miles was leaving a contrail. In 46 years of flying, I had never seen that many contrails.â One detail that Greg didnât mention but got our immediate attention is the presence of so many well-defined contrail shadows on the cloud layer below, something that we have never seen in abundance, either! Greg captured the shot with a Sony Cyber Shot pocket camera that he says he takes with him on every flight. 1/1250 sec, f/8; 4.45 mm, ISO 100. James Moss got this striking image, called Wingtip Sunset, somewhere over Missouri in 2018 from a window in a Southwest Airlines 737. Moss didnât have his Canon EOS 7D handy, so he whipped out his iPhone 8 and captured this beauty.Jose Mora captured this gorgeous image called Wing Over Sea near Maiquetia, Venezuela, using his iPhone 6 from a Cessna Citation 2.The judges for our Wingtip Wonders photo contest were unanimous in selecting Mark Pauldaâs brilliant skyscape that we are calling âSunset Connection.â In it, we see a sky that expresses itself almost abstractly, with a range of colors and degree of subtlety that lays to rest the notion that the sky is blue. About his shot, Paulda wrote, âThe sunset is even more gorgeous to watch when youâre high above land in an airplane flying away from the sunsetâs place on Earth. The view is stunning, and as daylight turns into night, you see parts of the sunset persist below you with an ethereal feel as one part of the world falls into darkness while another emerges in light. It can be seen as a symbol for how we are all connected by being on this planet together at this moment in historyâsomething big will happen tomorrow, something small will happen today; nothing lasts forever and everything changes.â In the meantime, we shall, as our winning photographer clearly did, revel in its great beauty. Camera: Canon 5D Mark IV; Zeiss Lens 18mm (manual); Aperture : f22; Exposure : 1/100.CAP Captain Maryann Tooker got this shot of Mount Shasta from a CAP Cessna 206 while surveying the extent of the Sheep and Hogg wildfires in the fall of 2020 in Northern California. iPhone 11 Pro Max.Ranadip Das captured the seaside beauty of the Virgin Islands on a flight from San Juan to Vieques, Puerto Rico. The flight skirts the Virgin Islands as it goes. Shot with a Google Pixel 4A.Ray Fuller captured this reflective study, called Massachusetts North Shore Salt Marshes, 25 miles north of Boston from a Piper Archer III using an iPhone 12 Pro Max using Apple ProRAW.In this image of the Sierra Nevadaâs Tioga Pass, Sandra Cleland used an iPhone 7 Plus and a slight touch of right aileron to get the bottom of this Cessna wing to mirror the beauty of the Sierras.Sergio Maraschin got this photo of a silhouette of a Cessna 172 encountered by chance in the traffic pattern at a Southern California airport. Maraschin used a Nikon D7200 to get the shot.Shawn Lynch got this shot, called Tahoe Sunset, from an Cirrus SR22, on a sightseeing flight when the conditions were perfect, a rare occurrence flying in the Sierras.Warren Pittorie got this GoPro HERO3 remote shot from the wingtip of a 1945 North American AT-6 Texan over central Florida.
Do you love taking photographs of airplanes or while flying? Enter your best photos in our Your Flying World contest today!
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