Fargo, North Dakota.

I wasn’t sure I would be going again this year. On Friday, I was at the airport photographing a Meet-and-Greet with pilots and crews from the Blue Angels, the F-22 Raptor, and the A-10 Thunderbolt II team. In the process, I saw some of the airshow rehearsals for the Saturday and Sunday shows.

When Sunday arrived, it was a beautiful day; I asked Lynn if she’d like to go to the air show with me. We got our online tickets and headed to the airport. The Fargo Air Sho (their spelling) is held every two to three years, depending upon the availability of major military demo teams. The last time I attended was in 2019.

I packed up my D500 with my used but newly acquired 200-500 mm Nikon lens, hoping to track and photograph those fast and high-flying aircraft. My goal with the propeller aircraft was to stop the action but get a shutter speed slow enough to blur prop movement. It turns out that’s a challenge.

I started at 1/200 of a second but found many images showing motion blur in the aircraft. On faster aircraft, I found I had to use 1/640 sec. to minimize aircraft motion blur, which left a minimal indication of propeller blur. Even then, this purple Mustang had mostly blurred images on my card.

I enjoyed watching a group of four T-38s in formation. Three were always in the lead, with a fourth T-38 trailing.

We were far enough from the show announcer that I couldn’t hear the descriptions of the activities well. He may have indicated why the formation was designed as it was.

The show itinerary included several P-51 Mustangs, and that’s no wonder. The P-51 played a crucial role in World War II, earning a reputation as one of the most effective fighter planes of its time.

The P-51 was renowned for its speed, maneuverability, and long range. Air show performances showcase these capabilities, wowing spectators with high-climbing aerobatics. For many spectators in the crowd, the P-51 represents a connection to a bygone era.

Following the venerable World War II fighter, one of the latest stealth technologies took to the flight line. I especially enjoyed the show as I’d been close to that beautiful aircraft only the day before.

I could “crank up” the shutter speed to 1/1600 of a second to capture the action without worrying about blurring the high-speed action. I captured a vapor cone that formed around the aircraft in some of its high-speed maneuvers for the first time. A vapor cone forms when a high-speed jet creates a low-pressure area around itself. This sudden pressure drop also causes a decrease in temperature. If the surrounding air is humid enough, the temperature drop can cause the water vapor to condense into tiny water droplets, creating a visible cloud. This phenomenon is often mistaken for a jet breaking the sound barrier, but it can occur at speeds below supersonic. The critical factor is the creation of a low-pressure area around the aircraft.

The aircraft’s low-observable technology makes it incredibly difficult to detect by radar, while its supercruise capability allows it to sustain supersonic speeds even without using afterburners.

It’s time to share images from the air show headliners, the Blue Angels. They often open their show with the diamond formation. Notice the slow shutter speed I used on this image. A propeller plane was on the flight line just before the Blue Angels flight. I’d slowed the shutter speed, and when the jets came out, I was too excited to check and change my shutter speed. There were many blurry images until I realized I needed to change the exposure time. Surprisingly, I did get some sharp images. This diamond formation is an example. I was panning at the same speed as the jets when I pressed the shutter and froze the action. I got lucky.

On this day, the conditions were right for vapor cones. As this F/A-18 climbed at high speed, I captured the start of one. The F/A-18 Hornet is a versatile, twin-engine, supersonic jet fighter designed for air-to-air combat and ground attack missions.

A modern camera that can capture ten images or more makes it reasonably easy to capture two aircraft crossing at midpoint during a show pass. Be sure you’ve set your camera to continuous exposures when holding down the shutter. When you know a high-speed opposing pass is coming, aim for the closest aircraft as it approaches the flight line center point. Once you’ve locked on, press and hold the shutter down. When the pass is complete, stop shooting. Here’s the one example that worked for me. I had three chances to capture opposing passes, but the first two passes happened while I was still on 1/320 second exposure, so only one aircraft wasn’t blurry, the one I was tracking. Fortunately, there was one more opposing pass on their program, and this one I got at 1/3200 second.

I hope my post will help you take photos at the next air show you attend. Please ask in the comments if I can answer your question about what I learned. As I noted, I used a 200-500 mm lens for this shoot but have used lenses with far less reach over the years. Newer cameras can be cropped with a loss of resolution, but you can still get acceptable results.

Here’s an example from a show in 2015. On a crop-sensor camera, the 120 mm is the equivalent of a 180 mm zoom on a full-frame camera. From there, I cropped it even more to get this result.

If you are into air show performance images, you can check out the 37 photos I posted on my Flickr site. The album is here. My Flickr site has a newly designed album page where you can view the images as a slideshow by clicking the video play icon in the upper right corner just above the photos in the gallery. That icon is one of three, and it looks like this:

John Steiner