It’s funny how being forced to shoot out of your comfort zone makes you look at things differently. Going into the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center with Jacques Gudé last month we knew we wouldn’t be allowed to use tripods. The security guard reinforced that as he went through our gear. So we knew we needed to shoot with high ISO and with wide apertures. Especially if we were going to do hand-held bracketing for HDR. I did most of my shooting in there with the 50mm f1.4, wide open. It was great on a couple of levels. Thanks to the late hour (there was almost no one there but us) I was able to get back far enough to frame the way I wanted without throngs of people blocking the aircraft, and like this shot of a Pratt & Whitney engine of a vintage Boeing Jet, I was able to make use if the lens’ narrow depth of field.

This is 5 brackets, hand-held. f1.4, ISO-1200.