Consolidated PBY Catalina

[Jay Beckman]

Catamount
PBY at Madras, Oregon

[Brian Corbett]

Night Stalker

[Joe Copalman]

Massive respect for the amount of time I am sure that took.

Have you tried an edit with the cockpit highlights darkened a bit?  Might make for an even more dramatic effect. Plus, I look at it this and I can hear my Dad shouting "TURN THE LIGHT OFF BACK THERE YOU'RE GOING TO CAUSE AN ACCIDENT!" from the front seat of his Buick circa 1985.   

[Brian Corbett]

Thanks, Joe!

It didn't take nearly as long as you might think. I believe I spent no more than 30 minutes on it in order to get the plane totally isolated. I darkened the cockpit a TON already, but I'll definitely go back and try to knock to down even more.

This is the one hangar shot that I really liked out of the many I took.

[Joe Copalman]

I forget which editing software you're using, but the masks in Lightroom now are awesome for stuff like this. 

If you're using Photoshop, doing a separate edit for the cockpit and copy/pasting the relevant bits into the main edit is a sort of sledgehammer way of solving the same problem.

[Jay Beckman]

Or layer the different ?exposures? and paint in the replacement via a mask?