Sometimes, you don’t need to see the whole of the subject in an image. I deliberately composed this picture like this as I felt it showed the most interesting bits of the aircraft (a Handley Page Victor at the Yorkshire Air Museum – I can highly recommend a visit!), and not show anything that distracted from it such as the background, and lets face it, long expanses of wing and fuselage aren’t terribly interesting really. This type of composition is often used in portraits, where the face is often cropped tightly, so why not use it in other types of photography?

Photographing looking up at aircraft with the sky in the background is a good composition (if you can get close enough), as of course, the sky is where the aircraft belongs. I composed this at a jaunty angle to include much the same features as before – the weird, bulbous nose and the large air intake. In retrospect, I should maybe have moved that fire extinguisher, and moved round a little so that I didn’t have that open access door on the right, but they were things I only noticed afterwards. Still, i’m sure I could clone them out if the mood took me!