Among other requests from the client were large cumulus clouds (apparently typical Hawaiian weather), #8 in the air back in the background (despite the fact that these two were never flown at the same time) and some nice dramatic lighting.
A little playing in Google Earth gave me a good idea of the shape of the coastline:
I could almost see the scene in my head as soon as I began delving into it. As usual, I presented him 3 sketches, which, due to his requests and the scene stuck so strongly in my head, were all various on the same idea.
1. A view looking down as the personnel push #21 out over the coral flats. we're looking east. Its is approximately 7am. The scene is backlit.
2. Same scene from the opposite direction. We're now facing due west and the scene is frontlit, thus making the colors much more saturated.
3. In the end, we decided on this one - a similar scene to #1, except that I've dropped the eye level to be even with the top wing of the airplane. This brings us in closer to the scene.
