f8 and Be There If You Can

F-117 Stealth Fighter, FL 350, just off the boom, "fighter drag" mission in a KC-10

There’s an old legend that a National Geographic photographer was once asked how he got his spectacular photographs. According to legend he said, “f8 and be there.” I have made a career of being there…in this case, about six miles above the earth and about 50 feet from an aircraft in flight. Photographing a F-117 on the ground, parked and tied down, is simple and anybody can do it at the USAF Museum. But making this kind of photograph is extremely difficult and the hard part isn’t the “f8” camera setting, it’s the “being there.’ It requires that the photographer has the cooperation of the Air Force and is permitted to fly with an aerial tanker crew on a refueling mission and that’s the hard part because you have to have a really good reason for asking…and even then the public affairs office will probably turn you down.

Ordinarily I have no interest in photographing aircraft on the ground…unless they are on fire or doing something unusual, but I really like photographing aircraft air-to-air. And, quite by accident, I got the opportunity to do that many times from Air Force KC-10 and KC-135 tankers. That’s how I was able to photograph this F-117 during a “fighter drag” mission out of March Air Force Base. The KC-10 has a big picture window for the “boomer” to see what he or she is doing and it’s the perfect place to see aircraft in flight up where they belong up around 35,000 feet. It’s the kind of photography that very few people are permitted to attempt, and it’s more complicated than you might think — you wait hours for the aircraft to arrive, they swoop in for a quick gulp, come off the boom, and are gone. Sometimes one will hang around for a few seconds to pose for the camera, as this one. Sometimes not.