B17 - Dark Skies Warmup

The weather for the Wings over Northern Michigan was fantastic.  Little cool breeze, some cloud cover.  The weather 5 minutes before the air show started - not so nice.  Seriously.  I drove though a lot of rain getting there.

When I arrived, I could see all the vendors were pretty much soaked.  From that time on, no rain and the skies did clear up for the show to start on time.  By the end of the day, nothing but sunny skies.  The weather people hit it right.

I was on time (very early) enough to be the first one through the parking gate.  Good news, parking close to the field.  Bad news, on departure.....  You get the drift.  That's OK.
Being there early I could walk up and down the flightline without running into a lot of people.  At some point I heard the B17 starting its engines, I'm guessing just to clean them out before the day's activities.  Anything burning gas, making noise and sitting still will get my attention.  Even I can get this in focus.
I'd been thinking of this shot for over a week - before the air show.  Lots of times I try to get the entire subject in the shot and that often doesn't turn out well.  The B17 up close is so big, a lot of the detail would be lost.  Once I arrived on location, the dark skies and polished metal cried for some creativeness.
I't been some time since I've given an HDR look to a photograph.  I like the effect, but the critter shots, horse shots and aircraft (up until now) seem to me to be more realistic.  I had to HDR the Harrier shot from earlier this year, and it looks a bit over saturated.
But this is different.  I don't want to go overboard, but there's lots of possibilities.  I'm going to go about 30% artistic here.  It's really more of what I like.
This is the Yankee Lady.  Has nice nose art.    This B17 is part of Michigan's Yankee Air Force.  It was restored to flying condition in 1995 after nine years of restoration.  Nothing sounds like four Wright R-1820-97 nine cylinder turbocharged radial engines turning over.

B17 Dark Skies Warm Up

NIKON D7200/18.0-200.0 mm f/3.5-5.6

80 mm, 1/160 sec, f/11, ISO 200 (Auto)

EV 0, Manual Mode

The dark skies really change the personality of the aircraft.  I have some good shots of this aircraft while in flight, looks totally different.  I thought about increasing the exposure here, but dark does it.  there will be plenty of light later.