JOHANNES WINKELMANN Growing up in Switzerland, I’ve always been fascinated by fighter jets and air shows, tracing back to seeing USAF Thunderbirds perform in 1991. While I’ve always enjoyed photography, aviation photography is something I picked up just a few years ago when I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area with its annual display of the Blue Angels - and many other display teams - during SF Fleet Week. An engineer by trade, I’ve never studied photography but have always been intrigued by the technical aspects. Outside of aviation photography, I enjoy taking pictures of landscapes, seascapes and macros. Most of my shots have been taken with Fujifilm cameras, which have served me well. I started off with an X-T1, and later moved the X-H1. Most recently, I’ve rented an X-T3 for Fleet Week 2019 which gave me the best results so far. My preferred lens was Fujifilm’s 100-400mm. I will always
USN Blue Angels over Alcatraz Island, SF Fleet week 2019.
bring a wide angle lens too, to get a different perspective. While the manual controls on the Fujifilm system have worked great for my kind of work, I’ve recently been looking at other systems to get higher resolution images - and better cropability. I always shoot RAW for the increased flexibility during post processing. I use Capture One as RAW processor, and occasionally finish photos with Photoshop and the DXO Nik Collection. My reason for joining ISAP is to learn more about events and shooting location, and share experiences with like-minded photographers. Having joined just this past January, I hope to meet some of the local peers at an air show soon!