IN THE FIELD: A Bygone Era

A few weeks ago, the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum in Reading, Pennsylvania held their 22nd annual World War ll weekend.

Visitors to the event can see reenactments depicting the life of soldiers from multiple nations in their encampments and in the field of battle. Period music is played, and there are big band concerts with dancing in the aircraft hangers. Military and civilian vehicles from the era on display and air shows and fly-bys are also part of the exhibition. Tours of the museum are available, and for a fee, rides can be taken in many of the airplanes.

In addition to all the displays featured in the museum, folks fly their vintage aircraft into Reading Airport from all over the country to participate in the weekend festivities. Tens of thousands of people come from far and wide to view the restored airplanes and relive a bit of the past.

The day I attended the event, cloud cover obscured the sun and sky, which made some shots more dramatic, and required pretty darn slow shutter speeds and wider apertures. I could have bumped the ISO up to a higher setting to provide more flexibility with camera settings, but I wanted to keep it as low as possible. I usually set the ISO between 100-400 because I find colors tend to more saturated and there is less digital noise at those settings. I purposely underexposed this photo to emphasize the clouds and to create more of a silhouette of the aircraft.

The challenge is, I don’t remember exactly what type of airplane this is. So, it looks like I will have to travel back to the museum. Oh darn.

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