AtMoshi I meet with the rest of the Coastal crew for the first time. I am always wary of flying with unknown pilots, as they are of having an unknown photographer on board. So our unspoken concerns were whether we could all work together. From my perspective, I need to know if I trust them in the air, can they do tight formation flying, can they fly on a heading and keep it. From their point of view, they need to know that I am not going to jeopardise the flight in any way, throw up or do something stupid once in the air.

In an A2A photoshoot there are two pilots, one to fly the subject/target aircraft and one to fly the cameraship. It’s not an easy thing to gain this trust. It’s not much good trying to look at their flying record, you need to look at how their employees act around them, talk to locals, passengers and fellow pilots, anybody to try and gauge reactions. Things can go wrong quickly in the air, I have no control and it can be seconds away from disaster. Since I have been doing this for a while now and encountered situations like this, I have found there is a moment where you know it will work, or a moment when you know it is wrong. So I have learnt to rely on my intuition, it’s not guaranteed, but it seems to work.

So I felt for sure that I was in good hands from the start with Coastal. Some people just ooze confidence and safety, French pilot Gilles Lauthier and his team at Coastal had these attributes. Later, the larger than life Kenyan pilot Joel Fernandes arrived with the Cessna Caravan camera-ship from Dar. From the moment I shook his hand, I knew again I knew that I could fly with these people.

The crew at Moshi got to work and removed both cargo hatch panels, so as to give me an uninterrupted angle of view. This meant that facing aft I could shoot into my seven o’clock position (I’m on the left hand side of the Caravan) for great head-on shots, then repositioning and facing forward, leaning against the bulkhead I could get a nine or ten o’clock tail end position shot of the subject ship before it got obscured by the Cessna’s large strut. But as an added benefit, they attached the airbrake-like wind baffle to the fuselage at the open door. This meant I could put my head into the slipstream a bit but as it was, the view was superb so I rarely needed to get into the airstream.

Life always throws you a curve ball just when you think you have it all sorted out. Behind all the preparation, there was a problem, a small one for the pilots, but a huge one for a photographer who has to show his clients aircraft in a good light. The brief was to show the PC-12 against the volcanoes, with the Serengeti and animals in shot below. The problem was there was a 3,000 foot cloud ceiling horizon to horizon, topping out at 8,000 feet. You could not see the volcano at all.

The other constraint was that we had to go to Ngorongoro Crater the next day, then on to Lake Natron. So we had to get the shot today. We waited all afternoon to see what the cloud would do, meaning, would there be enough of a break to illuminate the volcano from its base to the peak, all 19,000 feet of it? If this was not possible we could still catch the sunset on the mountain, but it would be above the cloud tops at 8,000 feet. This meant only 11,000 feet of the mountain would be visible, would that be enough?

So as the day wore on, we kept looking at the clouds, and at each other with a full array of concerned facial expressions, none of which helped make the sky any clearer. Patches of blue sky always seem larger when you are desperately seeking them, so when we did see some blue sky everyone got their hopes up, but it turned out to be just a tiny patch and was quickly covered again.

Gilles said Well, I guess there is only one way to find out. What do you think, Jon? I figured there must be a sunset up there somewhere, as for sure it’s not down here, maybe it was illuminating the volcano? It had come to that point, there was nothing else we could do, we had to have a look.  🛩️ 🌲

Have any thoughts or questions on this story? Jon would love to hear from you. You can click or tap any photo in this article for a high-resolution version along with a caption, if available. These photos were originally published in 2016 on Jon's personal website, Eye in the Sky Productions. More recently, Under African Skies was first published on Medium. As noted, this article is the second of four parts. To get back to Part I, click the Previous button down there on the left. The third and fourth parts are available soon, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, Jon Davison and his wife, Jude Brazendale, have just finished a new book; more details about which you can find by clicking its cover below.