If you currently have a Beechcraft King Air for sale or lease, or even available for charter flights, have you thought about the types of images you want in your marketing campaign? Unfortunately, within the aviation or general aviation market, branding and marketing efforts to sell aircraft is typically on the weaker side. The message the photography and image says about your King Air is a huge deal. With that, we’d like to share a few details from our experience to help.
It may be obvious but the two most important items to pay great detail to are the exterior and interior photographs of the aircraft. In this month’s article, we will cover items you need to consider for the external photographs of your aircraft.
Exterior Photographs
Backgrounds and Foregrounds
When you photograph the exterior of your aircraft, you first want to make sure that the weather is good on the day of the shoot. A sunny day is preferred whenever possible and the time of day you take photos is another factor you need to consider.
It is highly recommended that you either photograph the exterior of the King Air very early in the morning or late in the afternoon. This is to provide a better angle of the sun, which will light your aircraft properly. Always make sure that the sun is behind you whether shooting early in the morning or late in the afternoon. This will produce the best lighting conditions on your King Air. For example, it is best to avoid photographing the exterior of an aircraft from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. due to the poor angle of the sun. You never want to have the aircraft in front of the sun as this leads to a “backlit” photograph and the aircraft will either look dark or even worse, a silhouette.
As you photograph the aircraft outside of the hangar, many factors come into play in terms of making your photos appealing to your target audience. Think about where you want to place your aircraft before photographing it. Do you want your hangar behind the aircraft? If your hangar has a business sign on it, do you also want it behind your King Air and do you want to include it in the photo? Or maybe you would like the FBO company sign included in the photo? Other items that you need to consider is if there other aircraft parked next to the King Air or possibly equipment vehicles such as a tug or pick-up truck? These other aircraft and vehicles are a big distraction and make your King Air less appealing in its photographs. Another factor to consider when taking these photos is the foreground, which is what is in front of the aircraft? Are there chocks under the wheels that are visible or are there orange safety cones in front of and around the aircraft? You also need to make sure that the red safety ribbons around the pitot tubes and antennas are removed, as these also can be a distraction to the final photograph of your aircraft. Finally, make sure a tug is not attached to the aircraft as this is highly distracting. Numerous times there will be situations where it is difficult to get that “perfect” background for your aircraft. By considering hiring a professional photographer with extensive aviation photography experience, they will be able to remove these distractions in the editing process, possibly even replacing the actual background with a more appealing background that will add beauty to the finished photograph, which is your goal.
Weather Factors
There are times when a photography session could be cancelled if the weather doesn’t permit, yet an experienced photographer can still photograph the aircraft inside the hangar and with post production editing, make the aircraft look as if it was photographed outdoors on a beautiful day, or even at night, giving a more dramatic style to your aircraft, that will draw your target audience into your advertisement or brochure.
As you can see, many factors must be considered in order to produce the desired effect to showcase the beauty of your aircraft’s exterior. In next month’s article, we will cover the items you need to pay attention to when photographing the interior of your Beechcraft King Air.
About the Author: Jay Davis
Jay has been involved in the aviation industry for over 25 years and involved with aviation photography for over 15. His work has been featured in publications such as Airliner World and Airliner & Airways magazines for both journalism and photography in addition to appearing in over 20 ads in the past two years in Executive Controller, Business Air, World Aircraft Fleets and Charter Hub magazines. You can see his work at http://www.jaydavis.com.