About the Image(s)

This month's image comes from pure fortune smiling upon me. I was given the opportunity to ride with the US Army's Parachute Team, the Golden Knights. We had an air show at a local airport and I was invited to join the flight on practice/media day. There were six of us onboard and we got to ride around for about an hour. It was quite an experience.

This image was taken with a Nikon D850 with a Sigma 14-24mm F2.8 DG DN Art lens. I set it for auto-ISO, as I wasn't sure how much time I would have to monkey with settings before I took the picture. It was a pretty smooth ride and the soldiers weren't moving around too much in the plane, so I used a slower shutter speed and just enough of an aperture to give me an adequate depth of field, but wide open enough to help with the darkness. There was a huge difference between the brightness outside and the darkness inside, so the view out the door is totally washed out. I concentrated on exposing the people properly, as that's where the story is.

Exposure was ISO 800, 1/800 sec @ f/5. I cropped to focus on the people and opened up the shadows in post, but that's about it for changes. I liked how the black and white came out and gave it more of a journalistic feel. There weren't many vibrant colors, so I don't feel like I lost anything in the conversion to mono.