Blaine Harrington

My flights in helicopters, small planes, and hot-air balloons are often provided by clients as part of my assignments; if I’m shooting for stock, I’ll pick up the hire fee. Aerial tours are widely available to tourists and photo enthusiasts alike, and there’s certainly no limit to spectacular locations you can photograph from above.

According to a photo industry writer I know, I do something that’s a bit unusual: I freely admit that sometimes I’m too close to my own photographs to judge them objectively, and because of that, I ask for help.

I travel to take pictures, but sometimes I just happen to be in an interesting area, like last spring in Lexington, Kentucky. Let’s see: Lexington, horse country, the Keeneland racetrack nearby, and me never without my camera gear. Photography was bound to happen.

I learned photography in the film days, and when the huge change to digital came along, I changed not only my gear but the way I see. I used to have to see in terms of very specific criteria of what would work within the ISO range of my film and what the film could record in terms of light and shadow. Low ISOs meant I couldn’t get enough depth of field, or a tripod was needed, or I had to light something because there wasn’t enough information in pictures that had incredible shadow detail. High ISOs often meant an unacceptable level of grain and bad color rendition. As a result I passed up a lot of situations that got my attention but were beyond the capability of my film to capture.