The shot I took last night of a Royal Australian Air Force F-111 is such a hard shot to get, I thought I'd run through how it was done.

The hardest thing is to know where to point the camera. Because the shot is a long exposure shot, it must be done with a tripod which means you have to have the camera pointing in the right place, with the right focal length and exposure settings before the jet is anywhere in sight.

You get exactly one chance to press the shutter button once. Just once. If you get that wrong, you come back next year.

I was lucky enough to have information about the precise timing, location and direction of the dump and burn (thanks Ange), so I didn't have to guess so much (unlike last year). Still, it remained to be decided how long the shot should go for to get the plane to fill the frame.

The second hardest thing is having a good vantage point, but that's the case with any photo. Although on Riverfire night in Brisbane, with hundreds of thousands of people lining the river banks on all of the obvious good spots, vantage points are very hard to come by. Thanks to Dave and Con, I was able to stand on a very well situated, vacant block of land in West End that happened to have a great view of the city.

Then there is exposure. There are no test shots of your subject to work out how much exposure you want. You must make all the decisions ahead of time. Last year I guessed that the fire bellowing from the back of the jet would account for about a 2-stop exposure difference and that worked out about right. This year, I knew the jet would pass between the city and where I was standing so it would cast a lot of light on the city. So I went for about 2 and a half stops of exposure difference. That is, 2.5-stops under exposed, based on what the city looked like without the jet throwing flames overhead.

I estimated that I wanted a 5 second shot to get the jet to fill my frame as it traversed it's path, so I adjusted ISO and aperture accordingly to get the required exposure. Here's a shot of what it looked like with everything set before the jet arrived

5 seconds, ISO 200, Sigma 30mm f/1.4 @ f/11

Then it was a matter of waiting. I knew the jet would light up the sky at precisely 19:03. You don't hear them coming as they are well on their way past by the time the sound reaches you. At 30 seconds to run, I was ready with my finger on the button, to do the only thing left to do.

Right on time, the sky lit up.

Click.

Here's the result.

5 seconds, ISO 200, Sigma 30mm f/1.4 @ f/11

As soon as the 5 seconds were up, I grabbed my gear and made my way to my next planned vantage point.