Leading space?

[GeoffS]

he high location of the aircraft in shot 2 accentuates that the shot is taken from below. For me, I have more of an acceptance of an aircraft positioned high in the frame if it is shot from below.

Interesting!   'tis fascinating how different peoples' perception works.  I've got to say it makes sense that way.  I have to admit, for some reason I looked at the photo as take-off/climb, rather than a landing/descent.

I'll have to keep it in mind next time I'm working on some obvious landing shots.

Great discussion!

[k5083]

I'm generally with Richard.  Anything can work, if it serves a purpose.  I generally avoid having the wingtips just reach the edge of the picture, but sometimes the wingspread of the airplane is the whole point of the picture.  Like in the first pic below, I didn't need/want the wings to be clipped off, but I also didn't see the need to allow any space around them, since it is a very static and restful picture (which, by the way, I usually crop to panoramic aspect ratio when printing).

With a long-winged airplane like a glider, U-2 or B-24, though, you almost have to clip the wings in a frontal or rear view in order to get any interesting detail of the middle.  The second pic below is not what I would call a tight crop, just one where I clipped the wings so I could show a lot of airplane and not a lot of sky.

And then, often the highest impact pictures do omit most of the airplane and just show the jazzy part, like the third pic below.

A picture where the airplane is confined to a small area of the picture and there is interesting sky or other context can be effective in a different way.

Like Richard and Geoff, I do shoot my share of "safe" shots with the airplane taking up about 80% of the frame, but mainly for CYA.  I rarely like them very much; they look like everyone else's. 

August

[RichardVM]

Sometimes you need some space for dramatic conditions: The Horsemen, Sun 'n Fun 2007.

Richard

[Engine15]

I was posting on the McGuire review stating that I wished I had centered the props more per the conversation here. Looks like I might have learned something! First is original, the crop at least centers the props which I think is an improvement.
Comments?

[k5083]

Richard:  Good shot, perfect example.

Bill:  Yep, second pic definitely has more oomph.  Could even crop the left edge closer, say just to the left of the first plane's main landing gear.

August

[Vance]

Airplane buffs and spotters who have close to zero aesthetic interest in photography frequently fill the frame right to the edge when shooting, because that maximizes the size and detail of the airplane in the image.  They tend to regard any extra space at the edges as waste.  It is not so much a matter of cropping (which, of course, does not increase detail in the surviving part of the image) as tight framing in the first place.  On airliners.net you see this philosophy in action a lot.

This community is more oriented to the image in its own right, rather than merely as a window onto an airplane.  Although "composition" in 99% of ground-to-air airplane photography is so rudimentary that it barely deserves the name, a few aesthetic conventions do come into play.  One of them is that an airplane that takes up about 80% of the width of the frame looks more comfortable than one that takes up 95%, and another is that there ought to be a little more space in front of the plane than behind. 

In other communities that are even more oriented to the image vs. the airplane than this one, it is more common to have airplanes that take up less than 50% of the width of the frame and are situated in some kind of situational context, or are shown in extreme closeup.

So I see the views on this question as occupying places on a continuum of interest in airplane vs. interest in image, with fencecheckers mostly clustering around the middle of the distribution.
August[/quote

Very thoughtful post August. Because of being focal length limited in this shot I stumbled into a skyscape. I thought it added interest to my gallery full of the usual shots.