Up Close and Personal with the Fearsome New F-35 Jet

Given just 15 minutes to photograph the F-35A Lightning II, most professional photographers would choose a digital camera with a massive memory card and shoot nonstop. Jeremy Blakeslee showed up for his assignment at Luke Air Force Base with an old-school film camera, and made only a few photos.

The San Francisco photographer was given a rare opportunity to photograph the airplane, and brought along two manual Hasselblad medium-format cameras. In addition to granting him very little time to do the job, the Air Force also required Blakeslee to stay 20 feet from the plane. He worked frantically to make every shot count, darting around for the best position and light. A digital camera like the Canon 5D Mark II would have allowed him to fire off 100 or so photos. Instead, he came back with 30, eight of which are published here for the first time.

Blakeslee shoots exclusively on film, both professionally and personally, because he likes the intentionality of it. Every shot counts, and costs money, requiring greater attention to composition. Film rewards precision. “You really have to slow it down and calculate things in your head,” he says. “The whole process of shooting film is very meditative.”

Read the full article from WIRED.