Monthly Archives: August 2014

Porsche Club

wpid10846-AU0E0528.jpgWeekends are a great time for coming across events that you had no idea about. Our jaunt to Sonoma for the long weekend yielded just such an event when the local Porsche Club showed up in the town square to show off their cars. Nancy had a few things she wanted to see that left me a bit of time to wander around. It wasn’t a huge turnout but the quality of what was there was impressive. The majority of the vehicles were 911s of varying vintage but there were some 928s and a 924 or two. Some Cayennes also showed up but that seemed like cheating to me!’

wpid10848-AU0E0532.jpgThe owners were generally happy to discuss their cars and what they had done to them. They also didn’t mind the occasional photograph being taken. A number of the cars caught my eye but two are worthy of a special mention. One is the restored racer in a metallic blue which was in beautiful condition and had an interesting racing history.

wpid10852-AU0E0538.jpgThe other was a 911. The name for this type varies depending on your country but back in the UK they were known as Flat Noses. I wasn’t sure that I had ever seen one other than in a magazine so was really pleased to see it. I am not particularly a Porsche guy (not that I am any brand of car specific to be fair) but I do appreciate a nice car of any sort and these certainly counted. Given that Sonoma has a fairly healthy number of people of means, I had hoped a Carrera GT might be there but sadly not. Only seen one of those before and that was driving down a street in Chicago – a brave thing to do with a vehicle that valuable!

Curtiss Jenny

wpid10622-C59F2981.jpgThere are many vintage aircraft that I have had the chance to photograph over the years. However, I have not had many opportunities to photograph a genuine First World War era aircraft. That was something that I was recently able to address. Sonoma Valley in Schellville has a variety of interesting aircraft as I have mentioned in the past. One of these is Frank’s beautiful Jenny. It is in pristine condition. I had previously been around when it was due to fly but a fuel leak in a line had curtailed activities that day.

wpid10618-C59F2698.jpgThis time the plan was to fly a couple of people in the aircraft. Eric Presten was the pilot for these flights and he needed to run a quick air test before taking anyone up so three flights appeared to be on the cards. I arrived at Schellville in the morning to be ready. Unfortunately, the weather was not looking too cooperative. There was a little mist and the cloud base was pretty low with the surrounding hills having their tops obscured. We got the aircraft ready as we waited for the cloud to lift which it progressively did.

wpid10614-AU0E0081.jpgEric was soon able to get up for the air test. While the conditions were better for flying, they still weren’t great for photography. However, while he was up, the cloud was burning off more and more. The result was, by the time the two flights for the guest took place, conditions were ideal. For the second ride, Eric put in an overflight of the field allowing me to get something other than ground running shots, tail end departures or head on landings. The latter two were subject to a lot of heat haze so it was great to get something a little closer in.

wpid10616-C59F2600.jpgShe truly is a lovely looking aircraft and an example of something very rare to see. I will enjoy seeing her flying again. What will be even better is getting a chance to shoot her air to air. If the opportunity for that should come up, I will be a very happy boy. In the mean time, I am very grateful to Frank and Eric for including me in this. Great guys and a great plane!

Fireworks

wpid10856-AU0E9860.jpgThe timing of this post is probably unexpected. However, I am deliberately doing this since, if I had posted at the time, it would have looked like a lot of similar material from everyone else.  Why?  Fourth of July fireworks, that’s why.  We spent the weekend up in Sonoma over the weekend of the holiday. Sonoma has a nice town fireworks display. It lasts quite a long time with the whole display running nearly half an hour.  Part of this is by pacing the show.  It is a steady stream of rockets but not too fast.  However, at the end, they suddenly go nuts and fire off everything that is left in a mad fury!

wpid10854-AU0E9854.jpgAs is my usual thing with fireworks, I set up the camera, hold the cable release and then fire away while enjoying the display without looking through the viewfinder at all. I did tweak things once with a change in orientation as a result of the display getting larger than I had expected. However, I shoot almost without thinking about it. Here are some of the nicer shots I got. Nothing of the grand finale since that was so crazy it just turned the images into white expanses in the area of the explosions.

Crissy Field Windsurfers

wpid10508-C59F8577.jpgOne weekend afternoon, we ended a day out by heading down to Crissy Field in San Francisco. With the nice weather on the bay, plenty of people were out making the most of things. This included a bunch of kids paddling in the water and a lot more people out either windsurfing or kite-boarding. At this time of day, the sun is off to the west so backlights anything that is in the direction of the Golden Gate Bridge. However, this had a pretty pleasing effect with the bridge both backlit and also in the edge of some fog that was lingering out in the entrance to the bay. The backlight also worked well with the sails and kites that the people were using out on the water.

wpid10512-C59F8585.jpgI wasn’t shooting with the longest lens but it was enough to get a good view of the guys out there. One of the guys had a foil on his board which meant he was well out of the water when he had some speed. Others were getting plenty of air which always looks cool. Having so many of them zooming around at one time looked very nice. I might have to go back specifically to shoot this I a bit more detail. Shortly before we left, we even managed to get a Beaver on floats flying through the scene. I can always squeeze an aviation theme in if I try (as if getting air or foiling wasn’t enough).

Adobe Camera Raw and Video

Regular readers will be familiar with my gradual experimentation with video and video editing. In the early days of my playing with video, I discovered just how sensitive video is to exposure errors. The sort of thing that could be easily corrected in post on a raw still file were not so easily dealt with in video that was already compressed when it came out of the camera. Avoiding over exposure was one thing to do which is slightly different to shooting aircraft against a bright sky when having enough shadow detail on the aircraft is important and the sky can be recovered a bit to give a more pleasing outcome. For video this doesn’t work as well but having less shadow detail doesn’t seem to matter with motion as much as it does for stills.

Another change I made was to go with a development profile in the camera that is a lot “flatter”. This was something I read about on various blogs in that it gives the editor more to work with when grading the video later. This is certainly true but it means you definitely have to do some work in post to get the image back to something more pleasing.

I never cared for the editing tools in my old video editing application since they were weak and not as intuitive as what I was used to in Photoshop/Lightroom. Consequently, I embraced video editing in Photoshop when it became a better developed feature. However, I hadn’t found it as easy as I had hoped to get the right effect using levels and curves adjustments. Then it struck me (why it took so long when everyone else must have been doing this) that Camera Raw is the tool that combines all the things I need to enhance the video output.

I have now been using it on a couple of projects and I have to say it works very well. You have to convert the layer to a smart object first and then apply Camera Raw as a filter. If you don’t convert it, the filter only applies to the frame you are looking at and that is no use. However, one lesson I have learned is to work out the other parts of your edit first and leave this step to last. The rendering of the video with the filters applied is a huge amount slower. Short videos that would previously have rendered out in a minute or two may now take over an hour. This also applies to running through the video to make your edits. The real time rendering is lost. I suppose that you will be using a proper video editing suite if you do this on a daily basis so the use of Photoshop is moving away from its core role. However, it suits me to do so. Therefore, make all of the edits you need first and when you are happy with the final composition, convert to smart objects and filter away. Just remember that the conversion gets rid of transitions so those will have to be put back in again but that doesn’t cause me any problems. Then hit render and go and do something else. While Photoshop will do many things in the background, video rendering takes it over and you can’t work on another project while it works in the background so go off and write a blog post. That’s what I am doing right now!

Rustling the Ruslan

wpid10380-C59F1240.jpgA long time holder of the title of world’s largest aircraft (until superseded by the single example of its big brother) was the Antonov AN124 Ruslan.  This giant freighter was created in the days of the Soviet Union by the Antonov design bureau in what is now Ukraine.  With the thawing of east-west relations, the utility of this aircraft was apparent to many western organizations both civil and military.  These days, the operators of the type have a steady business moving outsized freight around the world.  There has even been talk of restarting production although that remains just talk for now.

wpid10495-AN124.jpgMy first experience of the big Antonov came in 1988.  It made an appearance at the Farnborough airshow along with a pair of MiG-29s.  This was a big deal at the time and I remember being amazed as I stood next to these types that had been something previously unlikely to be seen unless something very bad had happened.  The MiGs flew impressive displays and wowed all who were there.  The Antonov was not so lucky.  On the first day of flying as I stood with everyone waiting for it to take off, it started to roll down the runway before a bang and flash indicated a surge in one of the engines and she stayed firmly on the ground.

wpid10384-C59F1258.jpgThat was as close as I got to one for a long time afterwards.  I occasionally might see one parked in a quiet corner of an airport and once or twice spotted one flying far off in the distance but I never saw one up close and flying until a short while ago.  I have a Flightaware tracker on the movements of these beasts and one of them was due into Moffett Field on a Saturday.  I decided this was something I had to do so made the trip across the bay.  Everything ran according to schedule and I was there to get a shot as she came in across the fence (a fence that spoiled a nice finishing shot which I include just because it was almost nice.)  Not bad after 26 years of waiting!

Artichoke Art

wpid10450-C59F8290.jpgCastroville CA is the self proclaimed artichoke capital of the world. Given the percentage of the world’s artichokes that are grown there, I doubt anyone is going to try and challenge them for the title. They seem to have it wrapped up. To celebrate the artichoke, the town holds an artichoke festival. This has become quite a popular event and has now migrated from Castroville to the County fairgrounds in Monterey. This seemed like something worth a visit. While you could find all sorts of things at the festival and try artichoke in many forms – artichoke cupcakes anyone – and have your picture taken with Arty the Artichoke, the thing that really caught our imagination was the artichoke art.

wpid10448-C59F8287.jpgPeople sculpt various installations using artichokes and other vegetables. They may plan as long as they like but they have to bring the raw ingredients on the morning of the competition and create the art there and then. Some of them were really impressive. My favorite was the pig although several of the others looked pretty cool.

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Moffett Field Hangar One

wpid10482-AU0E7897.jpgA visit to Moffett Field cannot be completed without reference to the huge airship hangars that they have. Hangar One is on the same side of the airfield as the museum and is right next to it. Hangars Two and Three are of a different construction and are on the other side of the field away from public access. Google is apparently the owner/tenant of the hangars now so they are out of bounds. In the museum, they have pictures of the hangars under construction. However, now you don’t have to imagine so much because Hangar One has had all of its cladding removed as part of its rehabilitation. Consequently, the structure is bare at the moment and you can see exactly how it is constructed. It looks pretty amazing although, given its size, it will always look amazing.

Spruce Goose Then and Now

wpid10366-QB5Y7836.jpgThere is a fine line between being inspired by someone’s work and plagiarizing them. Today I shall tiptoe along that line. My friend Hayman Tam has recently posted some pictures of the Spruce Goose on his blog after a trip he had made to the Evergreen Air Museum in McMinnville OR. Go to Hayman’s blog at shutterspeedaero.wordpress.com to see that post and many others. In doing so, he reminded me of my own trip to the museum and photographing the Goose. However, that was not the first time I had seen it.

wpid10368-Spruce-Goose.jpgIn 1990, during my first ever visit to the United States, I was in Long Beach with my Dad. We visited the Queen Mary and in those days, the Spruce Goose was inside the large dome that sits on the waterfront. I had my camera with me on that trip. It was my first Canon camera, an EOS600 (which was called the EOS630 in the US) and that camera got a lot of use over the years. I still have it. I didn’t take a huge number of pictures of the Spruce Goose but I did get a few.

Moffett Field Museum

wpid10478-AU0E7889.jpgPaul’s visit also included a trip to Moffett Field. Neither of us had visited the museum there so we were both interested in having a look. To be honest, we had assumed it would be a relatively quick visit but the place was very interesting and a docent ended up chatting to us about lots of features in the museum and he was a great guy to talk to. He also took us outside to look at some of their more interesting aircraft.

wpid10466-AU0E7864.jpgThere are a few preserved aircraft at Moffett. Some restoration work continues and their P-2 Neptune is currently across the field being worked on. A P-3 is a short walk away from the museum but they have a fenced off area with a few other exhibits. These include an F-104G Starfighter that NASA used to operate, an AH-1 Cobra from the US Army, a research wind tunnel model (Moffett has an interesting selection of wind tunnels even after the demolition of the biggest one a few years ago) and their centerpiece, a Lockheed U-2. It is currently awaiting reassembly so the wings are on supports alongside the aircraft awaiting reattachment. They have worked hard on restoring it and it looks really cool. The camera installation is inside the museum as well.

wpid10474-AU0E7881.jpgMoffett Field’s history as an airfield is an interesting one and they cover it well. Whether it is the early airship work and the huge hangars that are still on the field or the long presence the US Navy had, the current ANG rescue operations or the NASA research activity, they have it covered. Do pay them a visit and support the work that they are doing. They have a few cool aircraft that are on the other side of the field which are currently out of bounds to the public so I shall have to see if there is a way to get to see them at some point.