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Images

Welcome to Falcon’s Images page. First, I would like to give a brief history and the nature of our archives. The images available here span from late 1983 up to the present time of aircraft I have photographed at various locations, mainly in Arizona and California. Inspired by various photo books such as KOKU-FAN and  “Cutting Edge” photography by U.S. Navy pilot C.J. Heatley, I strived to teach myself to be as prolific as those photographers and others in that field.

As a young amateur photographer I settled upon a camera system that I would make a life long commitment to. The company I chose was Canon, starting out with their AE-1 Program 35mm SLR in 1981. I couldn’t afford the more expensive Canon lenses at the time, so I gave a little known lens company Osawa, a chance. Armed witha 50mm standard lens and an 80-200mm zoom, I headed out to the local airshows and static displays to shoot my favorite aircraft. I always had a special affinity for Grumman’s F-14 Tomcat since I was in high school and tried to get up close to one whenever I could. Problem was, F-14s didn’t visit the Phoenix area all that much back then. However, I did manage to get some descent shots of the Blue Angels A-4Fs at Deer Valley Municipal Airport in 1983 and ‘86. I finally got to see some F-14s up close from the RAG (Replacement Air Group) VF-124 “Gunfighters” at Deer Valley Municipal Airport again and at Luke Air Force Base in ‘86. Some of these images are in the “Blue Angels” and “F-14A” tabs under “Images”

One foresight that I did have, was to use high quality film such as Kodak or Fujichrome. With the exception of a few rolls of experimental films, I used those 35mm films exclusively. With their extremely fine grain and color longevity, I knew I could archive them for years if stored properly. Up through the mid 1990s I used Kodachrome 64 whever I could find it, or at least Ektachrome 100 or Fuji Velvia.
By 1988 I was getting impatient for the jets to come out to Arizona, so I went to them. I had known about NAS Miramar through several books and of course “Top Gun”. I began to make day trips out to San Diego by hopping on an airliner (about an hour from Phoenix), renting a car and parking outside the east fence from Miramar’s two parallel runways. Before long I was tracking A-4 Aggressors, F-5Es, F-14s and various other Navy/Marines types making the “break” over the runway and turning final over my head. Although I shot up to 2 to 3 rolls of 36 exposure on every trip, only a handful were close enough on my 200mm lens to be useful.

1991 saw my first visit to the NAS Miramar Airshow and I was pleasantly surprised to see some A-4Es, F-16Ns and F-14A and “D” models up close. Still, the 200mm zoom wasn’t getting me close enough to the fly-bys. In 1992 I made a camera upgrade to the Canon EOS 100 and finally, a 100-300mm zoom. That helped a lot in achieving closer aerial shots. I was still in the learning curve back then of panning as I shot, framing the image, and shooting with the correct exposures. So far, in 18 years I’ve only missed three airshows at Miramar: 1999, 2001 (due to Sept.11th the airshow was cancelled) and 2007. In those 15 visits I accumulated literally hundreds of aircraft photos of several different types of  restored warbirds, helos, transports and fighters.
Around 1997, I started to become aware of “digital” photos. I thought that it would be a passing fad, as I didn’t think that it would ever equal  much less surpass “hard” film. In a few short years Adobe came out with “Photoshop” which is now synonimous with digital retouching and editing. Technology seems to double exponentially every year and it has become almost impossible to keep up with. I resisted the temptation to get into digital photography seeing it as a technology that was still being refined in 2000. Canon ventured in the digital arena in 1999 with their first digital SLR,  the EOS-1D going for thousands of dollars with only 5 megapixels, not really close to film’s fine grain and color. In 2002 I chose to upgrade to the EOS-1V HS, Canon’s flagship pro film camera. I don’t think there is a more advanced or faster 35mm SLR available even today.  The HS or high speed drive is capable of an astonishing 10 frames per second with the attached NiCad battery pack.  That’s a whole roll of 36 exp. in about 3.6 seconds!

 In 2005 I finally gave in to digital and purchased Canon’s EOS 20D with 8 megapixels and the truly remarkable Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS (image stabilized) USM lens. If you are going to shoot action photography, there is no better all around lens. It is super fast and tack sharp. All of Falcon’s aerial images have been taken with this lens since 2006.

The idea of creating Falcon came about not only because of aviation enthusiasts like you searching for high quality aviation images but also, there is a great need for modelers such as myself to find clear, full color, high resolution images of subjects they are interested in. We not only offer present day material, but also have a vast archive of aircraft going back 20 years plus. Every image, whether it originated as a scanned slide or digital capture has gone through what we call an “optimization process”.  This involves removing dust, scratches and adjusting color/contrast, or cropping if necessary to give you a professional image that is of the highest quality possible.  All of the images available here on this site are proprietory and have been taken or captured by myself. None of Falcon’s images are available in any other media form or anywhere else on the Web. They are totally exclusive to this Web site and are the property of Falcon Aviation Photography.

We hope that you find the images you are looking for and maybe some you weren’t expecting. If you can’t find an image of an aircraft in our library please ask, we may have it in our archives.
Please note: Image quality may vary depending on personal monitor settings and resolution. All of Falcon’s images are high resolution and are viewed best online on monitors with HD capability. (min 748 X 1080 dpi)

Best Regards,
Adam Aboud
President/Owner