Author Archives: Rob

Kenosha Hangar Visit

Back when we lived in Chicago, I went to Kenosha to photograph the Grumman Wildcat that had recently been lifted from Lake Michigan. While I was there, I also got to have a look around the hangar which housed the collection of Chuck Greenhill. His airworthy planes were stored in the hangar but it was also busy working on restorations of some Grumman amphibians.

His Duck was in the hangar and it was a great looking example. I was disappointed that I never got to see it fly. It looked immaculate. I understand it has been sold and is now in Texas. There were also two Mustangs parked in there. One of them, Geraldine, they claimed to be the most authentic Mustang example in the world. I don’t know how you would measure such things but they seemed very confident claiming this. It even included a full, working armament so you could head up and shoot someone down if you were so inclined.

The amphibian restorations were very interesting. Bare metal fuselages and the wings off while they were in work. It would have been good to make regular visits to see how things progressed but I was not able to go back again so couldn’t do that. Even so, pretty cool to see the workmanship on these airframes.

BNSF Along The Puget Sound Shore

Leave a Reply

The terrain around Seattle is pretty undulating which is not ideal for railroads. Consequently, a good amount of the track is along the shoreline where you can be guaranteed to be flat (provided you do a little work). Mukilteo is part of the BNSF line and it runs between the houses on the hill and the water’s edge including the new ferry terminal. There is a station there too for the commuter trains Sound Transit runs.

The majority of the traffic is freight traffic. Double stack containers or oil tank cars are a regular feature. I was there to look at the ferry traffic and the wildlife but, if a train is coming, I am not going to ignore it. One came through while I was in the station while another came through a little later when I was up at the grade crossing. For people living the US, long freight trains are not that unusual. For friends and family in the UK, the length of a US freight train can be quite a surprise. The leading locos can have disappeared off into the distance but the rear of the train hasn’t even come in to sight. A curving coastline like that along Puget Sound means it is easy to be unable to see each end.

Sunset UPS Departure

Leave a Reply

The UPS traffic at Boeing Field was busy in the run up to Christmas. As the light was starting to fade and the day end, another UPS jet taxied for departure. It got airborne and headed off to its next destination as the sky in the background had a nice warm look to it.

Corvette C8

Leave a Reply

Corvette’s latest model is a big change from their previous designs and got a lot of attention. While walking along the shore, I saw this example waiting to catch the ferry. I had the big lens on at the time which was way more than I needed. At least a bunch of shots can be stitched together to make a pano. When I got up on the walkway, it was easier to get a simple shot down on it. It’s a nice looking car.

United Max On Test

Leave a Reply

With the grounding order rescinded but the FAA, Boeing was getting Max jets ready to go for customers that were in a position to take delivery – namely US airlines and those that use US registered aircraft. United has a bunch of Max 9 jets on order and one of them was making a test flight just before Christmas. I got to see it return from its test. It taxied back in the south entrance to their ramp past a bunch of other test airframes awaiting acceptance.

Eagles on Camano Island

Leave a Reply

There were a few bald eagles hanging out on Camano Island during our trip there. There was one in a tree near the shore when we first got there. It didn’t seem in the least bit interested in us as we walked below it. If an eagle has recently eaten, it is quite likely to hang around for a long time doing nothing so we didn’t wait around to see what it did.

When we came back there were now two eagles in the area. I’ve no idea whether one was our original or if these two had come along since. A third flew past at one point getting the two quite agitated. If you have never heard the noise a bald eagle makes, you might be quite surprised. They have a high pitched squeak which doesn’t seem in keeping with their size. It is easy to identify though.

I wandered around trying to get the two of them in shot together. They were quite offset distance wise which meant getting them both in focus wasn’t practical. I did try and little Photoshop focus stacking when I got home though. It’s funny that bald eagles are so common in this part of the world but it is still exciting to see one and everyone seems to respond the same way.

Random B-2 Spirit Shot

Leave a Reply

I was working through some shots and came across a sequence a little before a bunch of shots I have used a lot in the past. It was of B-2s on approach to Nellis just before sunset. I had some clear shots of them in the distance including as the gear was traveling. Here is one of those shots. I just liked it and thought I would share it here.

Demolition of the Old Mukilteo Terminal

Leave a Reply

With the new terminal open and operational at Mukilteo, the construction crews have turned their attention to the demolition of the old terminal facilities. The redevelopment of the waterfront includes returning this old space for new usage. The old terminal building was not a particularly impressive structure but now it looks very sad as everything is taken down.

Across the road, the old lanes for holding the cars prior to boarding are still visible but some of the area has already been cut through by the new access road construction for the terminal. One side of the old lot was briefly the home for one of the toll booths which looked rather feeble on its own. Next time I was there, it was gone.

The old span that connected to the berth has been lifted out. It was sitting on a barge on my last visit. A large floating crane had been brought in for the large lifts where a smaller crane had previously been in use. The structures were in the process of being removed. The concrete top to one side had been removed and the posts showed the damage from the cuts. The other side had a crew preparing the lifting lines to take that side off too.

It won’t be too long before all trace of the old terminal is gone and then it will be very hard to remember what it looked like at all.

UPS Getting Very Busy

Leave a Reply

In the run up to Christmas, online retail had clearly been very busy. UPS runs their Seattle flights to Boeing Field and, while I was there, the traffic levels were well above the norm. I have posted the Asia Pacific 757 freighter in a previous post but UPS’s own fleet were really moving. Arrivals and departures were pretty frequent. As soon as the jets were on the ramp, the team whirled into motion getting the containers off and loading up the outbound loads.

High ISO Shooting and Processing Technique

Leave a Reply

I watched a video on YouTube about a way to process shots taken in low light with high ISOs to improve the noise performance. I wasn’t particularly interested in the approach until I was down on the shore as the sun was going down and I was using a long lens. I figured this might be a good time to try it out. The approach is to shoot a lot of shots. You can’t have anything moving in the shots for this to work but, if it is a static scene, the approach can be used.

Shoot as many shots as you can. Then import them in to Photoshop as layers. Use the align function to make sure that they are all perfectly aligned and then use the statistics function to do a mean calculation of the image. You can do this a couple of ways in Photoshop. You can make a smart object and then process it or you can process through Statistics. The averaging function takes a lot of the noise out of the shot. If you have lots of images, you can make it effectively disappear. I wasn’t prepared to make that many shots but I tried it with a reasonable number of images. The whole image isn’t really of interest. Instead, I include one of the images cropped in and the processed image similarly cropped to allow you to compare.