Wright Field: Playing With Lighting Effects

Until recently lighting has been quite an issue when taking photos of my airport dioramas. I have however recently purchased a lamp with a movable armature, which can sit quite nicely on a stool or be held high. This provides back up to the roof strip light. Along with this I have been using some of Picasa's lighting effects to give select shots a bit more atmosphere.

The above photo gives a view of the whole Wright Field layout complete with backgrounds borrowed from my Dowse National diorama. It is hard to get good focus on small close up objects as well as their background whilst sometimes the uneven lighting makes the colours appear too bright or not their natural colour.

Black and White has I think made a significant improvement to these older diorama shots but as well as black and white I've been sampling some other effects shots Picasa has. Below's Western Airlines DC-4 shot uses a 1960s feel filter:

Here it is again this time on this photo of the end of the dog-leg pier:

Picasa also has a 'vignette' feature which adds an old style fuzzy dark border to shots. here it benefits a shot of a taxiing United Stratocruiser:

And here it is again this time on a Delta DC-6:

Then on a beautiful TWA L-749 Constellation:

Lastly this shot gives a 'vignette' style overview. I'm very pleased with the range of photos I'm able to take even with my limited skill. The black and white is a lot more forgiving than the colour shots and these new styles add some grit to shots that are supposed to be from the 1950s: