by Andy Lay
“In Hot Pursuit” was created by Andy Lay of Fort Worth, Texas, from the open door of a DHC-4 Caribou, a Canadian-built cargo plane used during the Vietnam conflict. “Imagine flying in an airplane with the door wide-open and the only thing between you and falling 3,000 feet is a strap attached to the aircraft. That’s what it takes to photograph another plane in flight,” he explains. The flight originated at the Cavanaugh Flight Museum, located at the Addison Airport in the Dallas area. Once in place, he waited as the P-51D slowly approached the Caribou. Because all of the planes were propeller-driven, the goal was to photograph with a slow enough shutter to catch the appearance of a full rotation of the propeller. The image was captured with a Sony Alpha 7 II with an in-body stabilization feature to compensate for the vibration and turbulence. Andy used a Sony FE 24-240mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS lens zoomed to 54mm at 1/60th second, f/13 and ISO 50. Processing was performed in Lightroom Classic.
