Tag Archives: california

Half Dome Sunset

One of my goals while in Yosemite was to go to Glacier Point later in the day and watch the sunset casting its warm light over Half Dome. Half Dome is always an impressive sight to behold. Taking pictures of it never allows you to experience the scale and impressiveness of it but you do the best you can. I got up there about an hour before the sun was due to set in order to get a few other shots. I had intended to hike up to Sentinel Dome but I was running out of time so that part of the trip got scrubbed and saved for another day.

Shooting sunset type shots is a funny thing. The view looks great and you take a few shots. Then, as the sun dips lower, the light gets better and you shoot some more. This continues until suddenly it stops getting better and it is all over. You have to shoot a bunch of stuff since you never know whether it is at its peak or not. Consequently, you end up with a lot of shots that you will never use again.

The other odd aspect about this shoot was the discrepancy between the view and the atmosphere. Sunset at Glacier Point is a popular thing as you might expect. Plenty of people are there. Lots of them are families and families often include small kids. Small kids are not so enthusiastic about sitting around for an hour waiting for the sun to set. Consequently, the scenery looks great but all you can here is crying kids and desperate parents trying to buy off a tired and grouchy kid. Not quite what you had in mind. I just hope the parents still enjoyed the beautiful view since the rest of it looked painful for them.

Mariposa Grove

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The last time I was in Yosemite, it had just snowed and so the access to Mariposa Grove was cut off. It is a shame since visiting the groves of sequoias is one of the high points for me. The redwoods at the coast are impressive, certainly, but they don’t have the massiveness that the inland relatives have. Previously I have taken the tram ride around the grove so this time I decided to walk it. It was a pleasant temperature but the altitude is a bit of a factor so there were times when I was wondering whether my plan was so clever.

However, the nice thing about the grove is that you are heading downhill when you are on the way back and suddenly everything seems a lot easier. Walking does give a great way to experience the whole place at your own pace as well as see some areas that you wouldn’t see on the tram. You also get some exercise!

The lower part of the grove has some big trees but not as many as the upper grove. Getting up there allows you to be surrounded by some enormous living things. Every once in a while, I had to look at a normal tree (big by most standards) to remind myself just how much bigger the sequoias are. They are vast! Again, this is a tricky thing to accurately portray in photographs. However, sometimes you just have to enjoy the prettiness of it all. Having something in to scale it every once in a while helps too of course.

Bay Area Birds

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A while back I was in in the Bay Area and was near SFO. While the area is a good one for getting shots of the airliner traffic heading into the airport there, it is also a great spot for seeing some birds. The tidal flats are a popular spot for a bunch of shoreline birds. There are also some large birds like egrets that hang out there.

Pelicans are another type that show up pretty frequently. Coyote Point is a good spot for the pelicans since they like to soar along the ridge formed by the point and come right past you. I wasn’t there to specifically take pictures but I did manage to grab some of them as they came by. Hummingbirds also hang out on the point but I didn’t get any shots of them this time. However, there is always another chance!

Travis

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This is a plug for the magazine. For those averse to gratuitous advertising, look away now. Global Aviation Resource’s digital magazine was running a feature on the Air Force Reserve. Paul Dunn was leading the article but wanted some help on the piece so I joined him at Travis AFB located between the Bay Area and Sacramento in California. This is an area I am spending a lot of time in at the moment but it was fun to do something a little different!

Since the magazine will be the outlet for a lot of the work from the day, I can’t put too much in here at the moment. The Reserve article is live in the current issue but there will be some follow up material in later issues. However, here are a couple of shots from the day. The team at Travis were as helpful as you could possibly want and many thanks to everyone there for taking such good care of us. My only complaint is that Paul broke the sim but that is another story…

Experimenting with Multiple Exposures

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Right away I must admit that this is not my idea. I know that is true of many photographic tools but I once saw someone do something just like this and I wanted to try it out myself. The question was how to go about it. I improvised a bit and trusted the camera to do what I wanted which it didn’t always do so I have learned some lessons already.

The idea is to take multiple exposures of aircraft on the approach and then combine them into one image in which the aircraft appear multiple times. I would set myself up in a position and then take a sequence of shots as the aircraft moved through the frame. My first mistake was that, because I was taking the same shot each time, I thought the exposure would not change. Not true! The camera will make some minor tweaks and this will make the whole thing less easy. White balance may also vary but I shoot in raw so syncing that afterwards is no problem.

Since I was not using a tripod, the shots are not all perfectly aligned. I took all the images in Lightroom and used the Open as Layers option to Photoshop. Then I used the auto align layers option to get everything perfectly in place. It is surprising just how much you move doing something like this! I originally thought I could just set every layer above the base one to Difference blending mode and everything would pop right out. However, that didn’t work as I had hoped. The aircraft all had an odd color cast.

Instead, I put a layer mask on each upper layer and then painted in the aircraft one layer at a time. This is more time consuming but it did the trick. Of course, if the exposures are perfectly matched, you don’t have to paint too accurately. if not, the sky color is different so a far more accurate painting on the layer mask is required.

This was a fun thing to experiment with. SFO is a great spot since you can get parallel approaches in one direction and parallel departures on the cross runway. This puts lots of aircraft in a single shot which makes it more interesting. Another time, I will take the lessons from this time and try and get them a bit better.

SFO

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My work recently took me out the the Bay Area for a number of meetings. When they were all finished, I needed to write up some notes. Tapping on the laptop is something that can be achieved wherever you are. Also, SFO has a nice diverse selection of aircraft that visit. Therefore, my decision was made to take the laptop and the camera and head to Coyote Point. During the week there are less people there so it is quite a peaceful place to get some work done.

Of course, whenever something interesting made its way in to the approach, I could look up and grab a couple of shots before returning to my tasks at hand. SFO is like many hub airports in that it has a lot of the same things coming in and out. However, it has a lot of long haul traffic as well which provides an opportunity to see something a little different. This can include newer aircraft as well as those that are on their way out.

Lufthansa is now operating A380s in to SFO so catching that on the approach was a nice new thing to see. Meanwhile, the number of 747s arriving is gradually going down as they get phased out. Cathay brought one in as I was arriving. I imagine they won’t be around for much longer.

The sun was bright but the air temperature was relatively low. This meant that the heat haze was not too much of a problem. I could even get reasonable shots of the airport itself as the aircraft landed (nothing that would be publishable but not bad). A buddy was coming in with a BA 747 later in the day so I decided to move to the area on the shore near the Marriott to get some different shots. Unfortunately, this was not a good move. The heat haze to the runway at low tide was quite bad and most shots do not survive too detailed scrutiny. One to remember if I find myself back there at any time.

Expensive Toys

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Not a huge amount to say about this. It is just a chance to see some nice cars. The shots are not the greatest but you grab a chance when it is there. There is a car dealership about 10 minutes walk from us that specializes in very high end cars. They have a bunch of Bentleys and rollers but lots of sportier types as well. The odd thing is that they will regularly leave very expensive “motors” out on the street.

As we walked past (when I have visitors I often walk that way just in case there is something nice out) there were a couple of Ferraris and a new Lambo. Nice!

Some Special Schemes

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One of the things I did quite well with while around LAX was getting jets with special color schemes. Plenty of airlines are painting aircraft in something other than the normal house colors. This can be a livery that is part of their alliance, like OneWorld or Skyteam, or it can be something special of their own. It might also be a tie up with another organization.

Whatever the reason, it certainly makes things more interesting to get something that is a little different to break up the monotony of the regular fleets. Here are a selection of some of the different colors that were on display while I was out west. The Alaska scheme is not too apparent since the shot is head on but you can see it if you look. Others are more obvious. Hope they are worth a look.

America’s Cup Yacht Racing

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Racing of sailing boats is a sport that doesn’t get much in the way of mass media coverage. I grew up in a sailing town so, while I wasn’t a sailor, a lot of my friends were and so I saw a lot more of it than would be the norm. During my teenage years we also witnessed the first defeat of the US team in the America’s Cup, a story that did get international press coverage.

America’s Cup racing has always been the preserve of the richer members of society. It is a far cry from the sailing that is available to the average sailor with high tech boats and hand picked crews. (As an aside, one of the friends from school, Julian Salter, is a professional sailor and has been in crews competing for the America’s Cup.)

For a few years, I had been pretty oblivious to America’s Cup racing. The thing that changed it for me was the acquisition of TiVo. One of the channels covered the Louis Vuitton challenger series followed by the cup itself from Valencia a few years ago and we could record the races in full and then watch them at a more convenient time – adding our own editing courtesy of the fast forward button.

Nancy got into the racing as much as I did and we watched most of the series. It came as a big disappointment when the next round of the competition became hijacked by the stupid games of rich guys and ended up as a simple head to head competition that got virtually no coverage. We saw nothing of it.

Fortunately, some semblance of reason has returned and this time around, not only is the full format of the competition going to be back, they are having a series of events in the year running up to the event that are taking place around the world. This not only provides more opportunities for people to see the racing but it also allows the crews to get proficient with the new boats. This time the competition is not with monohulls. The boats are catamarans with wing sails.

The main competition is going to be held in 2012 in San Francisco. Whether I will be able to go and see any of it, I have no idea. However, one of the preliminary events was held in San Diego. I was already in the area for the El Centro photo shoot so I added a day to my travels to try and see the sailing. The plan didn’t quite work as hoped unfortunately.

I drove from El Centro to San Diego in the morning. Racing was scheduled for 1pm-4pm that afternoon. I did a quick reconnaissance to see where I wanted to be and got myself set up. Since it was early in the week, there were supposed to be about five head to head races. No massed racing but that would take place over the weekend when more people would be there to see it. Sadly, I couldn’t wait around for that.

More disappointingly, the great weather that San Diego had been experiencing vanished when I arrived. They was cloud rolling in as the racing started and soon it was more like a misty day. It was cold too! The best location to shoot from was the Navy Base at North Island. Since that wasn’t going to be an option, I made the best of what was possible without shooting right into the sun. Of course, there was not much sun but the mist did a great job of making what light there was turn into glare!

The boats that weren’t racing were also practicing so there were a number of boats out at various times. The races did come up towards us since one of the marks was very near where I was. Unfortunately, when a race came close, a boat towing advertising boards would also come into shot just as the boats did. This was great for TV coverage but not so good for those of us on the same level as the boats. I’m sure the helicopter shots looked great – when the helicopters managed to fly given the crappy conditions!

I got some shots but none are great. The ones here are to show you what was there. There is nothing there that I am too proud of. Some heavy editing was necessary to even get most of these. Was it worth it? Probably not. I could have stayed longer at El Centro or gone helicopter hunting in the passes on the drive back since electricity pylons were being assembled. I did end up chatting to some nice people so it wasn’t a total loss. Them’s the breaks!

Elusive ER-2

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Paul and I decided to make a trip up to Palmdale while we were in LA. Palmdale is about an hour and a half north of LAX if the traffic is flowing freely and can be a source of some interesting aircraft. It can also be a big disappointment. Luck of the draw. As we headed over the pass towards Palmdale, the clouds were drifting in which didn’t bode well. However, you never know.

One of the things we were keen to see was NASA’s ER-2. This is a variant of the U-2 airframe, two of which NASA acquired for research work. ER stands for Earth Resources I think although whether that is all they do is a different question! It was scheduled to launch that morning so we headed up.

We looked around for a spot to locate ourselves and found something that looked promising. We were well placed for the main runway. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize they were launching away from us on a cross runway until the sound of the ER-2 made us jump out of the car and watch it climbing away towards the hills. It turned and came close as it departed to the east but not a great shot.

Next to launch was a U-2. Lockheed Martin do maintenance on them at Palmdale and this one launched away from us as well. Our luck was not looking good. We could track the ER-2 since it was a civilian flight but whether the U-2 would come back or was being redelivered, we did not know. In the end, it did come back and flew right past us. Finally some success.

As we waited, something else showed up on the horizon. The shape looked slightly familiar and, as it came closer, it turned out to be a B-2. Almost totally unmarked, we suspect it was from Edwards. It flew a couple of approaches and then departed north. It came close enough to us but they are difficult to shoot unless the light is really good – which it wasn’t – so a little dull. However, a nice break.

Finally the ER-2 came back. We were ready for some lunch so watched it head towards us. Then, it broke off to land the opposite way on the runway it had departed from. There was no time to reposition ourselves so we missed out again. My results were a few distant crops of shots against a white sky so nothing to be too proud of. A bit of a bust of a day but that is the luck of the draw. Time to head off and get lunch after that!