Two very different shots from today.

It was a bit of an unusual day today as my two photo's show.  It started with me walking to Northland Mall to pick up my car after some repairs.  Since it is a 3 km walk I decided not to take my 7D with me.  I made good time then headed to NE Calgary for a quick errand.  As I was coming towards the International Airport I saw a plane swoop in low and then execute a quick bank to the west and head back out. Not sure what happened and not seeing the plane I continued on to my errand.

As I was heading home I saw the same plane perform the same maneuver and since I was close to the viewing area I decided to stop and watch for a bit.  While there I struck up a conversation with Ian Kershaw ( http://yyce3.smugmug.com ), an aviation enthusiast and photographer and he explained that it was a Nav-Canada plane conducting routine calibrations of systems.  It seems that the plane will come in from various distances, speeds and heights so they can check equipment with the tower.  We talked while the plane made another 1/2 dozen passes.

Since I only had my iPhone I still tried to capture a few shots.  It was not perfect but I likes the way this one turned out with the flare of the sun in the corner.

Then this evening in my basic lighting class we had the rare opportunity to work with a male subject.  Adam was a most interesting fellow and had some wonderful tattoo's.  We were doing Low Key lighting tonight and for these photo's we used a grid spot on the Alien Bees to give a more dramatic effect.  I only took a couple of frames as I knew the pose I was after and just waited until I got an expression I liked.