I took this shot at about 10pm on the flight deck of USS Lexington as an experiment. The floodlights in the picture were illuminating most of the deck but were enormously brighter than the island so I really didn’t think that the image would work even after shooting a very wide bracket (9 shots – unusual for me, especially in an outdoor HDR). In the end, however, the dynamic range was fine and I was let down by dust or spray on the fisheye lens creating a ton of flare spots all over the dark areas. Regardless, I still like the image enough to post so here it is.
The aircraft in the foreground is an SNJ-5 Texan, also known as an AT-5 outside US Navy circles or the “Harvard” to everyone else. It started flying during World War II and was used as an advanced trainer into the 1950s.
Beautiful !