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Getting Close to the Action to Get the Best Shots
By © Jody Dole
Sometimes, doing one's job well leads to sky-high results that not even the person experiencing them could have ever
imagined. Professional photographer Jody Dole knows this well and being one of the top photographers in the world led
him on an amazing journey.
Jody Dole is known for being one of the world's most visually stunning still-life photographers. His commercial projects
can easily pass for fine art prints, and his artistic eye guides his lens to create dramatically precise images. Jody has
won awards for photographic excellence from Graphis, Applied Arts, Advertising Photographers of America, PDN, The New York
Art Directors Club and Communication Arts. Recently, a shoot at a Westfield, MA air show kicked off a whirlwind few months
for Dole, during which he shot over 20,000 images in three states.
Invited to attend an air show in Massachusetts to photograph vintage warbirds and new fighter jets, Jody received an
all-access performer's pass to the show. In exchange for providing the pilots and crew with his images, Dole got an
amazing close-up look at what other attendees would view from a half-mile away. "I photographed the planes and crew
in the Tora, Tora, Tora Pearl Harbor reenactment as they flew about 50 feet off the ground," Jody explains about the
shoot. "I wasn't only close to the planes as they flew overhead, but I was also as close to the pyrotechnic explosions
as a person could get. It was a good thing that I became friends with Bob West, the remarkable head pyro engineer, who
knew exactly where to place me safely…but close. In the end, a full day of explosions and amazing aerial acrobatics
yielded some unforgettable shots."
It was the friendship that Dole forged with Bob West that led him on his next great air show shoot. "I talked to Bob a
little while after the show in Westfield and he was impressed with the shots that I took. So impressed, he later invited
me to another air show in St. Joseph, Missouri, to take more photos."
The following weekend, Dole spent four days as the guest of Bob West and the Tora, Tora, Tora crew taking thousands of
pictures of the swooping, diving, and barrel-rolling vintage World War II planes and fighter jets. At one point during
the show, Jody may have been a little too close to the action. "One of the bigger explosions nearly singed my eyebrows!"
Jody laughs. "It was at that point that I decided to take a few steps back."
Amazingly, about a month later, Jody was once again invited by Bob West to be the guest photographer at the Vectren Dayton
Air Show, the second-largest air show in the US, held at the Dayton International Airport in Ohio. Again, Jody received
access to places on the field normally reserved only for pilots and crew.
"In exchange for sending back the photos that I took, I was able to get up into the sky and do some really amazing sunrise
air-to-air shots as well as gain awesome position on the ground, allowing me to shoot all the action from F-16s and Harrier
jets to planes dating back to the Wright brothers, the pilots, the Tora, Tora, Tora crews and all of the explosions, which
I was starting to get used to," Jody points out. "That doesn't mean that I was getting bored with those shots, though!"
At each air show, Dole was prepared to match the speed of his shooting with the velocity of the planes and the timing of the
explosions. "I had to be extremely precise in all of the shots I took, so I made sure to pay special attention to capturing
my shots in high-speed burst mode," Jody notes. "That way, I could get as many shots as possible from one sequence of
events."
Shooting at such a high speed with opportunities for getting the shots literally zooming by, Jody had to be sure that he was
not held back from constantly capturing. "I used Lexar Professional 4GB CF cards to capture all the images from the
different air shows that I attended," says Jody. "With shooting as fast as I could, I needed a card that was as fast as
my eye so that I would never have to worry about my card slowing me down. My Lexar Professional cards were big enough to
let me keep shooting and they kept up with me, the jets and the explosions, which was no easy task. The Lexar cards
performed perfectly."
Jody Dole Bio
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