Tag Archives: photo

Air France Tries Everything At SEA

Airlines seem to be consolidating their fleets these days with less and less types showing up. I am sure that this is true for Air France too but, recent experience at SEA feels like the opposite. We seem to have been the destination for a lot of the Air France long haul fleet. We have had 777s coming in here for a while. I imagine that they will be the ones we won’t see much of again but you should never bet on that. The 777-300ERs are likely to be around for a while, even if the -200ERs go away.

Then we have had the A330s and the A350s. I like the look of the A350 so was pleased to see them bringing that on this route. I had wrongly assumed that, with the A350 being deployed here, that was going to be a regular feature. Instead, we have now got 787s coming in. I was north of the airport when I got to shoot a 787-9 lining up for approach. When I have looked more recently, that is the jet showing on the schedule. Who knows what we will get next? I am pretty certain it won’t be the A380!

Coming Home Over The Mountains

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My return journey from Chelan brought me over Stevens Pass on a sunny day. I had a schedule to get back for another meeting so wasn’t able to loiter too much but I still managed to take a few minutes out to stop and grab a couple of shots. There aren’t many places to stop going over Stevens Pass but, coming down from the summit heading west, there is a pull out and so I made my first use of that. I also stopped coming in to Index to grab a snack from the coffee hut there which has a nice view of Mount Index.

Nellis Says Goodbye To The Original Eagles

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It was recently announced that Nellis AFB has ended operations of the F-15C/D Eagles. The Eagles have been at Nellis since the 1970s so this ends a long association. The Strike Eagles are still based there and there will, no doubt, be F-15EX jets based there in the not too distant future but this was still noteworthy within the aviation community. I have shot a bunch of based Eagles over the years including the aggressor jets. They went a while back so I won’t include them here but here are a few of the Nellis jets over the years.

Territorial Goose With Attitude

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As the days get longer, love is in the air and this includes the world of geese. Suddenly the geese get very territorial both about potential mates and potential nesting locations. Fights can break out with very little warning. One of the geese in Juanita Bay was definitely in no mood for any competition. It was taking on anyone that happened to be in the way, whether they were a threat or not. Not just one at a time, either. A few other geese were in the area and they each got a dose of its attitude.

The flurry of activity when geese start sparring can often be intense but brief. In this case, the aggravation continued for quite a while. One goose would lunge at the others and they would settle again before he came at them once more. Much splashing of water, flapping of wings, honking and waving of tongues ensued. The goose that was chasing the others would be mouth open and tongue out as it charged at them. The tongue is a nasty looking thing on a goose. Lots of barbs on its surface.

After a few charges back and forth across the inlet, the others started to get the message. They took off and headed across the bay. The main goose was not satisfied yet, though. He took off after them and chased them well across the bay before deciding that the message had been received upon which he returned to the inlet to be ready for the next round of intruders.

Back to Red Flag

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It had been quite a while since I made a trip purely for aviation photography. I may have managed to sneak some photo elements in to other trips but nothing just for planes. I decided to go to Nellis for Red Flag 22-2. I had skipped 22-1 because it clashed with some other stuff despite having some things I was quite keen to shoot. German Tornados were supposed to be at 22-2 which I was keen to shoot but they sadly canceled before the event even kicked off.

Despite this, I still wanted to go. A couple of days off work seemed like a good plan and it was a chance to explore the capabilities of the R3 on aviation subjects. While the Germans were not attending, there were some foreign operators taking part. Singapore had brought its jets – admittedly, they didn’t have far to come with Singapore having units at Luke and Mountain home – and Saudi Arabia had brought some F-15SAs.

Things were not as active as they have been on some previous Red Flags. Not everything seemed to be flying in each wave. The B-1s only flew on one of the evening and one of the day sorties of the two I was there. Also, things seemed to happen earlier than is sometimes the case. There were some long gaps in flying when I wondered whether something was up. It was just a slow Flag I guess. However, it was a good chance to hang around and photograph some jets. I guess I can’t complain about that.

Focus Stacking With The Camera’s Help

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One of the functions that my new camera has built in is a focus stacking function. I know this is not unique to this camera but it is a first for me so I was keen to play with it. The mode, when enabled, allows you to set how many shots you want taken and set a scale for how close the focus points will be to each other. You then pick you initial focus point and set it off and it takes the sequence of shots incrementing the focus slightly between each one.

The resulting stack of images can then be processed in Photoshop to get the focus stacked output. This is so much nicer than making minor focus adjustments by hand between shots. The sequence gets created really quickly. I also was able to do reshoots easily. On one of the sequences, I had left it on auto ISO so it shot at a really high ISO level. I could reshoot with the ISO set low (tripod mounting means this was not a problem) in no time at all. (As an aside, the focus stacking algorithm actually seems to do a good job of reducing noise as well.)

I experimented with how fine a scale to use. Initially, I was taking way too many shots with very little movement through the image so I coarsened up the scale a bit. The nice thing was, if it didn’t go all through the range, I could just hit the shutter again and it would keep going. Photoshop chunked through the processing pretty well. I was shooting a few things but also experimented with some coins on my desk. Not the most original subject but one that shows the result well unlike the other things I was shooting. The software seemed to struggle a little on some of the coin edges so maybe a finer shoot next time or maybe I should just hand blend those bits.

Shooting After Sunset

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For a while, I had been thinking about trying to do some night photography of airliners. I had seen some good shots people had got but SeaTac does not have a lot of ambient light to illuminate aircraft flying overhead. It would be better if there was a large public space under the approach that would provide so brightness to work with. I was down at SeaTac to pick up a colleague and knew I would be there as the sun went down so I decided to have a go at some shots.

I used the 70-200 f/2.8 to get as much light as possible. The sun was going down so I was going through quite the transition of lighting conditions. Some were just twilight while other were when things were getting quite dark. The autofocus was also struggling since the center point was being used and the underside of the jet lacked much contrast in the dark. I still got a few usable images. The lack of light means they aren’t too great but it was fun to try something different. Now to find a better location!

How Many Turtles Is Too Many Turtles?

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Turtles are a common sight in Juanita Bay. There are some logs in the shallows that attract the turtles when the sun is out. They come up from the depths and bask on the logs to warm themselves up. On a given day, there will usually be a bunch of them. What I had not seen before was quite so many of them. The logs were full of turtles and those that couldn’t find a spot had climbed on top of those that could. One of the kids was counting them and came up with over 60 of them in this one little area. It was quite the turtle fest.

Battle Of The Alliances

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The creation of the airline alliances has allowed airlines to serve a wider range of routes than they could sustain themselves. Part of their obligation as a member of the alliance is to have some of their aircraft painted in alliance colors. Sadly, these liveries are not that exciting but I suppose it is some variety. I was quite surprised to get an Air France 777-300ER in SkyTeam colors vacating the runway at the same time a United 777-200ER in Star Alliance colors was taxiing the opposite direction. I felt like the scene for a stand off but no such thing occurred.

Chelan Riverwalk

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The hotel where my conference was taking place was down by the bottom of the lake in Chelan. I decided to have a stroll one evening and, as soon as I came out of the hotel, I saw signs for a Riverwalk. It wasn’t a long walk but it took me down one side of the river, over a bridge, back up the other side and then another bridge back to where I had started. There were a few people out and about but it was still pretty quiet.

There was a small park area along the river with a pavilion. I’m not sure what sort of events they hold there in the peak season but it would seem like a nice spot to hang out and watch performers doing their thing. They also had some elevated boardwalk sections. With the water level so low, these were a long way above the water but I imagine they are quite close when the water is at its peak.

They had installed some art work along one side of the river. There was a sculpture about wolves and salmon which related to Native American stories of why the lake doesn’t have salmon. They also had boards of the bodies in the solar system spaced out along the river in proportion to their distance from the sun. I imagine the whole area gets very busy during the summer but it was a nice spot to stroll while visiting in March!