Those left out

Like many a photographer, when I submit a selection of images to a magazine with an article, I'll typically send in more than the bare minimum, to give the photo editor a little bit of a selection. (and maybe to give myself a break from the hard task of making that final cut...). For my recent article on the Mojave Spaceport's Plane Crazy Saturday monthly festival of aviation (you can read the mag online here), there were three images that I really had hoped would be used, but which got cut instead.

The first was from Bill Deaver, the former publisher of the Mojave Desert News and current president of the Mojave Transportation Museum Foundation, among other things. It was taken during the very first Plane Crazy Saturday back in 2009, and to me epitomizes what PCS is all about...families getting to come out and get up-close-and-personal with planes and their pilots...something that is very rare anymore. And, it also shows the possible start of yet another stellar aviation photographer!

Copyright 2009 by Bill Deaver, used with kind permission

The next is an HDR taken by my MojaveWest and Light in our Lens partner, Rebecca Amber. She'd wanted a different angle on SpaceShipTwo than everyone else was getting, and so talked airport security into letting her up on the catwalk of the old control tower...being credentialed media has its perks! 

Image courtesy of Rebecca Amber/Aerotech News

Lastly, I shot a three-image pan of SpaceShipTwo...it can be so hard to get the whole thing in and still give an impression of the hugeness of this airplane/spaceplane combination...so here it is. Just goes to show that one's favorites aren't always gonna be the photo editor's favorites...but that's why he makes the big bucks, too...