All cool fighter pilots should look like they are not operating a complex and expensive jet. Instead, they should look like they are out cruising in a convertible with their arm resting on the door just taking in the scenery. This guy obviously understands what is required and provides the casual look of a person enjoying their day!
A trip to the northwest may involve seeing plenty of wildlife but the Otters and Beavers that I was most excited about were slightly different. These came from the stable of deHavilland Canada. More importantly, they were on floats. The Pacific Northwest is a great place for watching floatplanes. They are heavily used for transportation between many locations on the water. I saw a few while we were on San Juan Island or on the ferries between the islands but not a large number and not when I was in a position to get good shots. However, once we got to Vancouver, things ramped up a bit.
If you have not been to Vancouver, the harbour (it is a Canadian harbor so I think I am spelling it correctly) has a very busy floatplane base. Flights go to surrounding areas and the gulf islands on a regular basis. The planes are a combination of turbine powered Otters and Beavers with either piston engines or turbine conversions. Harbour Air is the dominant operator but others do show up occasionally. The area along the waterfront has undergone a big redevelopment with a convention center and it has great walkways along the water that provide an excellent view of the operations. Planes seem to be coming and going all the time. The may come in across Stanley Park and land in front of you or swing around the harbor and land towards you depending on the wind. As they water taxi in someone else will be heading out and departing towards North Vancouver before turning around the park and heading out over Lions Gate.
We were there at the end of the day so the evening light was very nice on the aircraft. The large number of high rise buildings on the shore does mean that shadows can encroach before the sun has gone down but this is a small issue. Later in the visit we were over in Stanley Park and I got to see some aircraft taking off since they came closer to our position. The damp air certainly makes for some nice streaming vortices off the props when they are at takeoff power.
If you mention going to the beach, most people will initially visualize a sandy stretch with the sun in the sky and the waves lapping the shore. While that is certainly nice, I also love a rugged beach on a rough weather day. We took a diversion during one of our day trips and headed for Rialto Beach. There was rain in the air and the wind was certainly blowing but this enhanced the atmosphere of the beach. Just offshore, large rocky outcroppings rose from the water. Their tops were almost obscured by low cloud and the waves were crashing up against them.
The shoreline was covered with debris that had washed ashore. Logs were stacked up at the high water mark where the waves had pushed them as far as they could go. The bark was stripped leaving the core wood polished and exposed. The stones that made up the beach were ridged based on how high the tide and the waves would push them. Everything looked dramatic in the damp and windy conditions. The attraction of the place was obviously high because plenty of people were there. Whether walking their dogs along the beach, taking a walk along the water’s edge or just standing up near the logs and staring out to sea, they were there in numbers.
Sometimes you take a shot when you know it is pointless. However, something inside you says take it anyway and delete it later. One such shot was a 737 I saw heading to SFO while I was over in Hayward. I don’t know why I bothered with the shot, maybe the colors looked unusual, but when I looked at it later, it appeared to be in Boeing house colors. It looked like one of the 737-8Max development aircraft. A quick check on Flightaware and indeed it was. This shot is useless for most purposes but it is my first shot of a 737Max!
Our vacation included a few ferry rides. Washington State Ferries come in various sizes depending on the route you are taking but they are all a fairly decent size. However, we passed this guy on one of our legs. This is what I would call personal ferry service. I imagine that, with so many islands and less traffic to most of them, this is the best way to deal with transportation needs. I don’t know whether there is a schedule or if it is on demand but I love the idea. I imagine the onboard catering is pretty limited though.
Pacifica is a popular spot for paragliding. We were driving by when I saw some gliders up above the cliffs. We made a detour to try and find a good spot to see them from. A little trial and error and we found a place with a good overview of what was going on. The gliders were spread along the cost so, at some points, they were far off and at others they would suddenly be all around you.
From where I was, you could see where everyone was launching and recovering. I will head there at some point to see what things look like from up close. It might be good for some shots as they are beginning and ending their flights but might not be a great vantage point for in flight shots. A two man glider that allows me to focus on shots of other flyers would be cool.
I am a little late to discovering the Enfuse plugin for working with HDR images. I started out many years ago using Photomatix. At the time, it was the go to software for creating HDR images. Then Adobe got a lot better with their HDR software within Photoshop and I started to use that. Even more recently, Adobe built HDR processing in to Lightroom and I didn’t need to go to Photoshop at all. The HDR software worked reasonably well so I stuck with it. I sometimes felt that it didn’t do as good a job of using the full range of the exposures but it was okay.
I wasn’t entirely satisfied though so have kept an eye on other options. Someone mentioned Enfuse to me so I decided to give it a go. It is a plugin for Lightroom and, in the free download, you can try it out but with a limitation on the output image size of 500 pixels. Obviously this isn’t useful for anything other than testing but that is the point.
The first thing I tried it on was a shot I made at Half Moon Bay looking up at a P-51 Mustang prop and directly into the sun. This is certainly as much of a range of exposures as you are likely to get. The perfect thing for an HDR trial. The results in the small scale file seemed pretty impressive so I decided to buy the package. There is no fixed price. You make a donation via PayPal and get a registration code. I am impressed by the quality of some of the work people put out so I am happy to donate for what they do. With the software activated, I reran the P-51 shots. Below is the version I got from Lightroom’s own HDR and following it the version from Enfuse.
I did have some issues initially. Lightroom was not reimporting the image after it was created. This turned out to be an issue with the way I named the file in the dialog and a tweak to that seemed to fix things. Strangely, it had been fine on the trial so I have no idea why it became an issue but it is done. I also played with a slightly less extreme case with an F-22 and, as above, the Lightroom version is first and the Enfuse version is second. I was really pleased with the result on this one with a very natural look to things. So far, I see Enfuse being a useful tool for my HDR going forward.
I have mentioned A340s and their gradual demise a few times in the blog. Sometimes it has been that I have got ahead of myself. However, I recently was genuinely surprised. Apparently, during the summer, an A340 makes a single flight a week into Oakland from the Azores. I had no idea about this until I read something about it online. A direct flight from Oakland to an island in the middle of the Atlantic? Who would have thought it?
I managed to be in place for the arrival one time. The airline is HyFly. I am guessing you have never heard of them. The jet is chartered from another operator but the whole operation is Portuguese controlled. (The Azores are Portuguese if you didn’t know.). The aircraft is totally unbranded. An all white A340-300 sounds really dull. I guess it really is. However, the novelty certainly caught my attention and I am both pleased and annoyed that I had no idea it was a regular visitor so close to home.
Okay, I will freely admit that this is not going to be the most informative post. We were walking through Port Townsend and a car came by. Nothing unusual in that. However, out of the sunroof was a dog wearing goggles, presumably to protect the eyes from dust and debris while on the road. This is not the sort of thing I normally see so I thought I would share.
If you spend a day somewhere, you can get absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Alternatively, you can be somewhere for a short time and get a really lucky break. I was down in Hayward awaiting an unusual Airbus movement as I headed to something else and, in the short space of time I was there, someone else showed up. This was a Boeing 757 that has been converted for private charter use. I have actually come across this aircraft before but, when it showed up heading in to Oakland, I was rather pleased with my good fortune.
