B-17G-80-VE 44-8471 "Winged Warrior"

Composing the image to be painted


I have a vague idea of a low angle that shows the nose art, but beyond that nothing has been worked out yet.

Back in March I set up a bunch of low-res B-17 models in a combat box formation with "Winged Warrior" in a position most likely to get other B-17s in the background, then set up some camera angles to see if anything really popped out.


Below is a selection of seemingly random angles.

01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39

 

The one shot out of these that really popped out at me was the head on shot, #25. That won't work for this particular painting since you wouldn't see the nose art, so I'll save that for another time.

There are a few others that are appealing, #'s 3, 32, 34 and 35. But the reason these look good is that they almost duplicate the angle of Keith Ferris' "Fortress Under Fire" mural in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, so, those are out.

I find myself leaning towards angles like #'s 28, 29 and 30 now. These have no other B-17's in the background, but I'm not above "cheating" and sliding some in.

To keep "Winged Warrior" large in the frame, I'm almost certainly going to have the wing tips extending beyond the edge of the frame, so it'll be nice to get some other B-17's in the background where the viewer can see the "whole" plane. Background planes are also good for showing off the complete tail markings which tend to get obscured or distorted at the angles I'm looking at.


Larger versions of four of the angles I'm considering.

Tilting the camera makes what would be a very boring shot look a lot more dynamic.

The first 2 here obscure the the tail, so that makes them less favorable to me.


 

 

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Copyright 2010 - David Rawlins
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