We even relaxed enough to have a little fun with some of the shots as well.īefore we headed out Greg assisted the brave and foolish Casey up onto the tail fin of one of the planes and we did a few shots up there as well.īack in the car, I was exhausted but still on a natural high from exploring the planes. The bombed out cockpit made an awesome backdrop for some unique portraits. After I had my fill of HDR shots, Casey suggested that we do some shots of him inside a plane. Greg had seen a cop car drive slowly by a few times but they never stopped. We occasionally heard voices from the nearby houses so we kept as quiet as possible. I proceeded through the airplane graveyard with Casey and Greg who helped point out interesting shots and helped me in and out of the planes as I explored each one, getting shots of every cockpit and interior. As I rattled off my first HDR inside the cockpit I thought to myself “Abandoned school buses, eat your hearts out!” With the nose of the plane removed you could see right through to the ground below. Above me, levers, switches, wires, and buttons speckled the ceiling of the cockpit. The instrument panels were largely stripped of gauges and dials.
#Plane graveyard windows#
Half of the windows were still intact and hazed over by years of grime and fungus, and the other half were either gone completely or partially shattered, giving a broken jagged view of the other sleeping planes half hidden in the surrounding trees and undergrowth. The seats had long ago been stripped of their padding and were now bare metal repositories for dead leaves and debris. Over the years, vines had wound their way up through the windows and skeletal nose of the plane and draped the inside of the deteriorated cockpit. Hunkered over, I slowly made my way up to the cockpit. From the low ceiling, to the wire bundles that hung like ropes, to the protruding rusted metal parts, everything screamed tetanus! Casey carefully passed my tripod mounted camera up through the hatchway to me. “I’m going in! I just want you guys to know that if this plane collapses and I die, that I will have died happy!”I hoisted myself up into the fuselage of the plane through the hobbit door and crouched there a second, making sure everything was stable. This was my heaven, these are the photo ops that I live for! The beautiful contrast of industrial, man made decay juxtaposed against the slow progression of nature taking over again is a subject I love to explore.The plane looked stable enough, so I turned to Casey and Greg. My mind raced with possibilities for the countless amazing shots inside these planes. Not five minutes down the road we saw the giant tail fins of an entire graveyard of old war planes looming across the highway from us, and sure enough there were many of them in plane sight (sorry had to do it…). PLANES? There was more than one? Yes, according to Greg, there were at least eight! With my energy and excitement now ramped up, imagining what this place might look like, we picked up Greg in a CVS parking lot and headed off. Casey called a friend who said he knew exactly where the planes were. An hour and a couple hundred shots later we started packing up, but not before meeting and talking to Casey’s sister and mother who joined in a few of the shots.Īfter lunch at the Gypsy Cab Café it was time for the airplane. Casey had 4 pictures of himself that were taken about 10 years ago at the same location and one goal for the day was to recreate those shots. We pulled up in the parking lot of the pier on St Augustine Beach and the familiar cool crisp smell of the ocean filled my nostrils.
The next day Casey and I set out on a mission to get him some rockin’ head shots and to find this airplane. The planes and property are owned by a local man who had bought them and stripped the parts to sell to the local Grumman company.
These particular planes (the S-2C’s) were outfitted to preform photo reconnaissance work as well. They were one of the first aircraft designed to combine the detection equipment and armament to hunt and destroy submarines while operating from aircraft carriers. (She was very friendly and her photos are brilliant! ) We later learned that the planes are Grumman S2 Trackers, naval bombers from 60’s and 70’s. Not 30 minutes after I clicked send, she called me and was more than happy to point the way, but not before warning us that it was on private property and we should be careful. She specializes in wedding photography, but she had done a photo shoot at the location we sought. We did some research and found Agnes Lopez.
I had seen a picture on Flickr of an old abandoned airplane near St. Augustine (his hometown) to do some head shots for him and to seek out interesting locations. While there, we made plans for a trip to St. I was in Gainesville, Florida this January to visit one of my best friends, Casey to see his performance in the play Closer.
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