Jay Davis Aviation

Jun

30

Busy 2017

General Posted by Jay Davis / 0 comments

Wow! Where in the heck has HALF of 2017 gone? I cannot believe that today will mark, more or less, half of the year, already being crossed off on the calendar. As they (who is they?) say, “Time Flies When You Are Having Fun.” Believe me when I say, I know this first hand.

I have been so busy lately, that I have completed neglected by blog, haven’t posted in over a year and it is my own fault, I’ll admit.

This year already, I’ve traveled to Boston, St. Augustine, FL, Denver, San Antonio, Houston, Birmingham and Georgetown, TX to photograph private aircraft, whether they have been for sale, or for charter operators. I look forward to seeing where the rest of 2017 will take me. Europe and Canada would be nice! If you or your company has an aircraft that needs professional photographs to SHOWCASE the beauty of it. My passport is ready and so am I.

Each and everyday, I am filled with such gratitude and thankfulness that I get to have a “job” that I absolutely LOVE. Believe me, I know how fortunate I am able to do something that I have a passion for. I have loved airplanes and flying since I was 3 years old, and to combine my love for photography and make a living from it, is extremely humbling, to say the least. God has blessed me, more and more and I always want to give Him credit; for without God in my life, I would not be doing what I am doing.

In closing I would just like to say how much I appreciate each and everyone of my clients, past and present. You have all helped me to grow my business and become a better photographer and a better businessman and for that, I am extremely grateful.

Enclosed are some of my most recent photographs from 2017, along with my most recent cover shot on Business Air magazine.

If I can be of assistance to you and your company, please contact me. Always glad to help!

God Bless You!

Nov

27

Being Thankful

As I look back on almost the end of the year 2015, there is so much to be thankful for with my aircraft photography business and I am so grateful for all that God has blessed me with.

Last year, in 2014, I photographed twenty six aircraft for various aircraft brokers and charter operators throughout North America. I even had my first international assignment to Toluca Mexico to photograph three different aircraft for one brokerage firm.

This year my goal was fifty six aircraft, an increase of thirty jets for the year! As of this writing, I’ve had fifty jobs this year, and I will have number fifty one on Monday, and I am so grateful for all the new business.

I have some extremely loyal clients who have been with me from the very start, and I’ve also gained a number of new clients, as well. The months of May, June and July were extremely slow for me, and then all of a sudden, August, September and October exploded for me and I’ve been swamped! In the first part of November, I photographed a Hawker jet for a client in Corpus Christi on November 1st and then the following week, I had an aircraft to photograph on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Four jets in four days! Wow! I was so busy, so tired, so exhausted and so grateful.

The next week, on Monday, November 20, 2015, I flew to Las Vegas for the 2015 NBAA (National Business Aircraft Association) convention, with over 27,000 people attending the event. The show ran from Tuesday through Thursday and I meet so many new, potential clients, as well as seeing past and current clients, as well as many friends and colleagues.

This week was a week of recovery from the NBAA Convention, I walked over 6 miles a day, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday while attending the convention. The only two cities that can host this convention are Las Vegas and Orlando, as these are the only two cities that have convention centers large enough to handle that many people. Being located in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, I sure with the City of Dallas, would expand their convention center even more, so that Dallas could also be part of the NBAA Convention mix! Are you listening Dallas leaders???

In closing, I would like to share some of my most recent work from the past few months, and also just to share how thankful I am for God answering so many prayers for me and continuing to let me grow my business and do what I love. It has been said that if you love your job, you don’t consider it work. I am so blessed and fortunate to feel that way about my aviation photography business.

I would like to wish each and everyone a Merry Christmas. Jesus is the reason for the season!

Aug

09

Summer 2015 Update

Airliners / Aviation / Business Jets / Corporate Aviation / General / Photography / Texas Posted by Jay Davis / 0 comments

I have thoroughly neglected my blog for over a year and I need to get back into the swing of things and make sure I blog at least once or twice a month. There have been so many things going on with my aviation photography business and I could not be more thankful to God for opening so many doors for me and my business.

In April of this year, 2015, I was hired by a company to photograph a new Falcon 2000 that was being added to their charter certificate and I got some great images of this beautiful jet for their marketing purposes. I am enclosing the photographs that the company used in the advertisement, along with some that I took for my own marketing campaigns as well. I hope you enjoy viewing them.

If you and/or your company have a need for professional photographs of any aircraft that is for sale, lease or charter; please contact me if I can assist you in SHOWCASING the beauty of it.

Thanks for stopping by and I’ll work on becoming more consistent in updating this blog in the future, I promise!

Apr

04

South Bend Lear Jet – Part Two

Airliners / Aviation / Business Jets / Corporate Aviation / Photography / Texas Posted by Jay Davis / 0 comments

Published May 30, 2014 in Airliners, Aviation, Business Jets, Corporate Aviation, Photography, Texas

I apologize for taking so long to write the follow-up to the first part of my South Bend, IN travel odyssey that I took part of about two weeks ago.

We were finally able to get back on our flight and fly from CID (Cedar Rapids, IA) to ORD (Chicago O’Hare) and when we landed at ORD, to say that airport was a MADHOUSE would be an understatement. I think every flight that was going through that airport that day was affected by what happened with the Air Traffic Control center having smoke in their building. Thankfully, it was only smoke in the building and nothing actually burned down at the ATC center from what I heard.

After we pulled into our gate and deplaned I went to go find out where I needed to catch the flight on United Express to South Bend, IN. I looked on the video boards and it was not a good sight to say the least. ALL flights to South Bend, IN had been cancelled for the entire day! Granted, SBN (South Bend, IN) is only 89 miles away, but I really didn’t want to
have to drive it, if at all possible. So I go to a gate and ask an agent if she can help me and she says all flights to
SBN have been cancelled, but all of a sudden she said, “Hold on, we are having one flight tonight at 9.30 p.m. and I got you the last seat on it!” I was quite relieved to hear the nice gate agent say that, so she printed me out a boarding pass and now I just had to wait about five hours to fly to South Bend, IN.

Since I had some extra time, I decided I might as well now go ahead and eat dinner here in the ORD airport, as it will be too late to eat dinner in South Bend, since I am supposed to be at the airport hangar to photograph this jet at 7:00 a.m. the following morning. So I went and grab some dinner, along with plugging in my iPhone and iPad, so they could start to
charge and get some more juice in them. After dinner, I went to the video boards to see where my 9.30 p.m. flight would be departing from, and I did not see the flight listed, AT ALL !! This is NOT a good sign, to say the least !! So I went over to the closest gate and asked the nice gate agent about my flight to South Bend and he informed me ALL flights have now been cancelled to South Bend, for the day. Great, just great, I thought, what do I do now, and that is what I asked him, “What options do I have to get to South Bend?” He told me there is a bus service or I could rent a car, at my
expense, of course.

I decided I would ride the bus to South Bend, it can’t be that bad. So I walk about two miles, or so it seems, to the bus terminal at ORD airport and I go up to the ticket agent window and I ask the lady waiting on me about the bus to South Bend, and she says, “Oh sir, I’m so sorry, the bus just left at 7:15 p.m., (it was 7.25 p.m.!!) and we won’t have another one until 9.15 p.m. I decided right then and there, it was time to rent a car. So I walked from the bus terminal area to the loaded zones for all the rental car busses to pick up clients. The first bus I got one was Enterprise Rent a Car and the bus drive asked me if I had a reservation and I told him no. He then proceeded to tell me that they were all sold out of cars and I would have to find another rental car company. The next bus I found was Alamo/National, same song, second verse. No cars and I was told to get off the bus, more or less. The third bus was Hertz Rent A Car and they had cars available. As I was getting on the bus, I said something about South Bend, IN and these two ladies perked up and said they too were going to South Bend, IN. I told them, “Well good, I’m either riding with you, or you two are riding with me, no sense in renting two cars.” To make a long story very short, it took about 45 minutes to get a rental car with Hertz as they were TOTALLY slammed due to all the flight cancellations.

My two traveling companions were from South Bend and had been in Newark, NJ calling on a client of their company and were so glad to be able to catch a ride with me. It was a great way for me to have wonderful navigators that got me through downtown Chicago at night, and we finally arrived at the South Bend Airport around 10.30 p.m. or so. Both of these two ladies had left their cars at the SBN airport, since they had flown out there, and my hotel was right next to the airport so everything worked out just fine, for them.

Unfortunately for me, I had no luggage, no clean clothes, and no toiletries. After I checked into the hotel, the front desk clerk gave me some shampoo and some toothpaste and a toothbrush and I was very grateful for that.

I woke up at about 4.45 a.m. unfortunately and could not go back to sleep, so I decided to go to the local Wal-Mart and at least purchase a crummy shirt and some crummy shorts to photograph the jet in, so that I could at least “try” and keep my clothes from yesterday, somewhat clean, in case my luggage never arrived in SBN that morning.

I photographed the jet, the two pilots that helped me were absolutely wonderful and I got the shots I needed. After the shoot, I went back to the airport to see if my bag had ever arrived and it got in on the first flight that morning. From there, I went back to the hotel, took a shower, cleaned up and put on clean clothes, and then ate lunch with a airplane buddy of mine that was in the area that week on business. From there, I went straight back to the airport and caught my plane back to Chicago O’Hare. When we arrived at the gate in ORD, we were parked at Terminal F and my connecting flight was in Terminal B. Not good !! I became a “race-walker” and I walked as fast as I could possibly walk, without running anyone over and I made it to my gate in Terminal B with about 10 minutes to spare! Praise the Lord, I did make it. Although I knew that due to that extremely tight connection, my luggage wouldn’t make it and I was right. But I made it home to DFW on-time and everything was good. I finally got my bag the following morning and it was delivered to my door, but I wasn’t there to get it. You see, I had another shoot with a Gulfstream G-200 at 7.30 a.m. that morning at Dallas Love Field. It is good to be busy.

Here are some of the shots from the South Bend Lear Jet. I’ll post some of the G-200 that I shot the next day at Love Field, sometime later next week.

Thanks for reading my blog, I appreciate it!

Oct

29

NBAA Convention

Airliners / Aviation / Business Jets / Corporate Aviation / Photography / Texas / Turbo Props Posted by Jay Davis / 0 comments

I had the pleasure of attending the 2014 NBAA (National Business Aircraft Association) Convention last week, from Oct. 20 – Oct. 24, 2014 in Orlando, FL and it was just awesome, to say the least!

This was my first convention to attend and I was told to be prepared for sensory over-load, and that was so true. The Orlando Convention Center is huge and I do mean HUGE !! I walked the entire floor on Tuesday and met with a great number of prospective clients for my aviation photography business.

I also saw good friends and past clients I’ve worked with these last few years as I’ve pursued my passion of aviation photography full time. It was so wonderful to see some of my past clients and to hear how they are doing, as well as
putting a name with a face in many instances, as sometimes I really never see my clients face to face.

The first night of the convention, I was invited to attend a private party by Universal Weather and Aviation, Inc. at B.B. King’s House of Blues and it was a great party! There was a very good cover band, but I didn’t get the name of the band, and they played a lot of great classic rock and party songs and everyone seemed to be having a very good time. The food was wonderful as well and I’m thankful that I was invited to such a great party. Good times!

On the second day of the convention, I went to what they call the Static Display at Orlando Executive Airport and there are probably 20 to 30 business jets, at the least, who are parked all around a certain part of the airport so people in the business aviation community can see the latest and greatest jets and propeller aircraft for sale, lease or charter. To me, the two highlights of the static display was the Embraer Lineage Corporate Jet, and the Airbus Corporate Jet. Both were absolutely gorgeous and if you happen to have a few extra million dollars just lying around, you too can own one of them!

That afternoon, I went back to the convention hall and at one of the vendor’s booths, Pollard Aircraft Sales, they had brought in from Discovery Channel’s TV Show “Airplane Repo”, Kevin Lacey. It was so nice to meet him and actually talk to him about some of the repo’s he has done for the TV show. He is pure Texan and just a great guy to visit with!

Later that evening, I was invited to Shell Aviation’s private party at Howl at The Moon, which is a sing-along, piano bar. The musicians they had playing at this event were incredible. Each of the musicians did not play just one instrument, they played two or three during the course of the evening! How incredibly talented each one of these musicians are, to play one instrument very well, but two or three? Wow!

At this party, I really struck it rich! I met the other two cast members of Airplane Repo! Ken Cage and Mike Kennedy, and to top it off, Kevin Lacey was there, too. I got my photo taken with all three of them, along with Mike’s wife who was in attendance, also.

I am so grateful that God has opened up so many doors for me the past three years, as I pursue my passion of being the best, aircraft photographer I can possibly be. I also am extremely thankful that I had the opportunity to attend this great convention and I made some new, excellent contacts and I hope they call me in the near future to photograph an aircraft they have for sale, lease or charter.

Here are just a few of my most recent photographs for various clients, I hope you enjoy them.

God Bless You !