Sequence composites: a takeoff or landing as a photo series in one image

A single takeoff photo shows one moment. A sequence composite shows the whole process: the nose wheel lifting, the main gear leaving the asphalt, and the aircraft climbing out of the frame – all against the same background. Image series like this look elaborate but follow a clear logic. In this guide you learn how to shoot a takeoff or landing so the series can be put together cleanly later, how to pick the right individual frames and how the montage works with layer masks.

Sequence composites: the short answer

For a sequence composite you shoot a takeoff or landing as an uninterrupted burst sequence from a fixed vantage point – ideally from a tripod, with manual exposure and a fixed white balance. Then you pick a few evenly spaced individual frames, load them as layers into a photo editor and use layer masks to reveal only the aircraft in each layer. The background comes from a single image, the aircraft from all of them.

That sounds easy, and in principle it is. Most failed composites don’t fail in editing but in the shoot: a shifted frame, jumping exposure or aircraft that cover one another.

Which subjects work

Not every movement at the airport makes a good sequence. The best are those where the aircraft’s attitude visibly changes:

• Takeoff with rotation: The classic. Roll, nose wheel up, liftoff, climb – the nose rises from frame to frame, the path climbs. With big aircraft such as a Boeing 777-300ER, the flat, long takeoff roll looks especially impressive as a sequence.
• Landing with flare: Approach, flare, touchdown. If the tires smoke at touchdown, you have a natural high point in the middle of the series.
• Go-around: A go-around shows a change of direction – the aircraft descends, levels off and climbs again. You can’t plan for something like this, but if you shoot in bursts anyway, you can use it as a composite later.
• Crosswind landings: In strong crosswind, the sequence shows how the pilot takes out the crab angle just before touchdown. More about those days is in the article on crosswind landings and storms.

Which of the two basic forms suits your spot better depends heavily on perspective. The differences between takeoff and landing photography are described in detail in the guide Landings or takeoffs?

The right spot: side-on instead of head-on

For a sequence you need a location from which you see the flight path from the side. If the aircraft comes straight at you, the positions stack up one behind the other and cover each other. From the side, they spread across the image instead.

Elevated locations with a view over the runway are well suited, from where you have the takeoff roll and the first seconds of the climb in one frame – for example visitors’ hills such as the Munich Airport visitors’ hill (Besucherhügel) or the Vienna Airport spotters’ hill. Whether rotation actually happens within your frame depends, though, on the aircraft type, the weight and the runway direction in use. Heavy long-haul aircraft lift off later than light short-haul jets.

Also watch the light: because you capture a long stretch of the flight path, the sun should be roughly behind you along the entire stretch. How to work that out beforehand is shown in the guide Planning the sun position.

The shoot: how to get clean raw material

The most important principle: Everything that can change between frames, you lock down. Only the aircraft may move.

A shutter speed that freezes the aircraft is plenty for jets. For propeller aircraft, the same applies as for single shots: times that are too short make the propeller look frozen – background on this is in the article on propellers and shutter speed. Because you shoot series, your memory card should be able to write the data out quickly; what matters here is explained in the guide to memory cards for burst shooting.

How much spacing between the individual frames?

Choosing the frames decides the effect. Ideally the aircraft just don’t touch or leave a small gap. With a side-on view, the right time interval depends mainly on two quantities: the aircraft’s length and its speed. An Airbus A320 is just under 38 meters long, an A321 about 44.5 meters.

The rule of thumb: time interval = aircraft length divided by speed. That way the aircraft moves on by exactly its own length between two positions. For some breathing room in between, take the next larger suitable interval from your series.

In practice, you don’t choose by seconds at the computer but by eye: lay the candidates side by side and make sure the gaps in the image look roughly equal. On a takeoff they grow as speed increases – you can leave that deliberately to show the acceleration, or skip frames later in the climb.

The montage: step by step

Before the actual montage, you develop all selected RAW files with identical settings. Edit one image, transfer the settings to the rest and change nothing individually afterward. How to do that efficiently is described in the article Batch editing burst photos; the basic workflow in Lightroom is shown in the Lightroom workflow for aircraft photos.

1. Load the images as layers

In Lightroom Classic you can open the selected images directly as layers in a Photoshop document. In Photoshop itself, there is a script for loading files into a stack under File › Scripts. The empty background image goes into the document as the bottom layer.

2. Align, if necessary

If you shot from a tripod, the layers already lie perfectly on top of one another. For handheld series, auto-align helps – with caution: the algorithm can orient itself on the aircraft instead of the background. So check the horizon, runway edges and buildings, and align by hand if in doubt.

3. Create masks

Every layer except the bottom one gets a black layer mask that initially hides it completely. Then you paint only the aircraft free with a soft white brush – including landing gear, engine exhaust and, on landings, the cloud of tire smoke. That works in Photoshop just as in Affinity Photo or in one of the options from the overview Free photo editing for spotters. Because the background is the same in all layers, the mask doesn’t have to be pixel-perfect. A generous, soft edge around the aircraft isn’t noticeable.

4. Check the transitions

Zoom to 100 percent and trace the edges of each mask. Typical problem zones:

• Clouds: They keep moving during the series. If a cloud is behind the aircraft, you see an offset at the mask edge. A tighter mask helps here.
• Shadows: On the takeoff roll, the aircraft casts a shadow on the runway. Decide: either with a shadow at every position or at none.
• Heat haze: The shimmering air above the asphalt looks different in every frame and creates restless edges. On warm days it is therefore better to shoot the sequence early in the morning – more in the article Avoiding heat haze.
• Other aircraft and vehicles: If something taxis through the background, it shows up in a different place in each layer. The masks protect you from that as long as they are tight enough.

5. Finishing and export

Only once the montage is done do cropping, straightening and sharpening come in – on the finished, merged image. A stretched panorama format usually emphasizes the movement better than a classic 3:2. Tips are in the guides to cropping and straightening and sharpening without artifacts.

Hand-painted masks or stack mode?

For image stacks, Photoshop offers automatic stack modes that calculate one value per pixel from all layers – for example the median, the brightest or the darkest value. For star trails or strings of lights at night, that is handy. For aircraft in daylight the results are often messy, because fuselages have bright and dark areas at the same time and the sky isn’t equally bright everywhere.

Method	Effort	Control	Well suited for
Hand-painted layer masks	medium to high	full	daytime shots, colorful liveries, cloudy skies
Blend mode “Lighten” or “Darken”	low	limited	dark aircraft against a very evenly bright sky, or vice versa
Automatic stack mode	very low	hardly any	night shots with position lights, light trails
Selection tools plus mask	medium	high	aircraft against a high-contrast, calm background

For night sequences, take a look at the guide Photographing aircraft at night – light trails and long exposures play a bigger role there anyway.

Stay honest: a composite is a montage

A sequence composite shows something that was never visible in a single moment. That is legitimate as long as you say so openly. Write in the caption that it is a composite of several shots.

Many aircraft photo databases value unaltered single shots that document an aircraft. Check the current rules before every upload – an overview of typical criteria is given in the article Editing photos for JetPhotos and similar sites. Photo contests also regulate montages differently: some have their own categories for them, others exclude them. And if you show your composite on social networks, the export settings for Instagram and forums help make sure the wide format isn’t awkwardly cropped.

Typical mistakes and how to avoid them

• Panned instead of holding still: If you follow the aircraft with the camera, you get nice single shots but no shared background. For a composite, the camera stays put.
• Framing too tight: Rotation happens farther back than expected, and the aircraft leaves the frame before it lifts off. Rather include a bit more surroundings and crop later.
• Too many positions: Overlapping aircraft quickly look like an image defect. Less is more here.
• Inconsistent editing: Even small differences in exposure or color result in visible edges in the sky.
• Forgetting the label: A composite with no note about the montage misleads viewers – and can get you into trouble in forums and contests.

Conclusion

A good sequence composite is made two-thirds at the fence and one-third at the computer. Fixed framing, manual exposure and a spot with a side-on view give you raw material that almost assembles itself. In editing, you stack the uniformly developed images as layers and use masks to reveal only the aircraft. If you choose a few evenly spaced positions and label the montage openly, you get an image that tells a whole takeoff or landing. If you are still at the beginning with editing aircraft photos in general, start with the guide Editing aircraft photos.