Please don’t think I’m making light of how hard I work at getting digital images, or that I’m glorifying traditional aviation artist. Hard work is hard work and building the models, the bases, composing the picture, getting the correct depth of field, getting the right lighting and sharpness to get the photograph to the point where Photoshop Filters can be applied is a lot of work. I love the impression the filters create, and art is art. This is merely another medium. It is a way of lifting my photography to a new level of imagery. And that is exciting, especially when I can create ANY scene, time, place or situation. So here it is, it is model art - photography (traditional 35MM or digital - the principles remain pretty much the same) - and computer image manipulation and rendering - all combined to create digital aviation art.

A good friend of mine is aviation artist Gerry Asher who along with creating beautiful aviation art work, is also the President of the American Society Of Aviation Artist and kindly sends me the ASAA quarterly magazine from time to time. Reading it I learned that the members of that prestigious society also have a difficult time categorizing just what is digital art and what is it’s place in the world of aviation art. It’s just going to take some time to see how it all falls together. In the mean time enjoy the digital Aviation art I have had the pleasure of creating and I hope it encourages you the viewer to create some of your own. Check out the visitors photograph and art galleries at Macho Grande NAS to see what others are up to.

1. Depicts a F6F-5 Navy Hellcat flown in 1946 by the “father of the blues”, Lt.Cmdr. Butch Voris, the first leader and the one responsible for creating the United States Navy’s flight demonstration team, The Blue Angels. The Hellcat model is an Otaki 1/48 scale model placed on a scale taxi-way and photographed outdoors with an airport in the background. The prop was turned by the wind. The “artistic poster edge” filter in Adobe Photoshop was used to create the final image.