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One of My Better Encounters with the Dreamlifter

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I have had some mixed luck with the Dreamlifter.  Light failing at the wrong moment or the sun setting just before departure are two examples.  On this occasion, though, things worked out pretty well for me.  I was visiting Future of Flight so I was on their viewing deck when the jet departed.  I watched them start up (including some nice puffs of smoke as fuel and oil burned off at ignition) but they were partly obscured by a hangar.

Pushback made everything easier and they then taxied right towards me.  It is true that you are looking into the sun at this point but it was still not a problem to get shots of the plane without a problem.  They taxied out past the parked IL-76 and then held in front of us for a moment.  The wind was good for northerly departures so they taxied across the threshold and then down Alpha to the other end of Paine Field.

Take off had to wait for a couple of Cessnas and then they lined up and headed our way.  I was definitely not alone on the viewing terrace at this point!  Little areas of snow alongside the runway were apparent when the outboard engines disturbed them.  Then they were rotating and climbing towards us.  Finally I got some decent conditions for some shots.  Now, I guess, this will happen a lot and I will wonder why I ever was bothered about not shooting the jet in nice light.

LAX is Attracting the Neos

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The A320neo (and more recently the A321neo) has been a big seller for Airbus.  However, introduction has not been smooth with both of the engine suppliers struggling to meet their commitments for powerplants (Pratt and Whitney definitely having the worse time of it).  Despite this, the neos are turning up in service in a lot of places but I had not seen a lot of them.  My trip to LAX changed that a bit.

Here I got to see a few operators with the neos in service.  The far larger fan diameter of the new generation engines makes the neos reasonably easy to spot and I like a big high bypass engine so I appreciate the change.  It won’t be too long before they are around in huge numbers and won’t be worthy of comment but, on this trip, I was pleased to see so many.

Qantas Celebrates Aborigine Art Again

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Qantas has decorated previous aircraft with liveries that encompass aborigine art.  Their Wunala Dreaming aircraft was well known around the world and, in an age when airline liveries tend to be rather bland, these colorful jets are a welcome change.  They have taken a similar route with one of their new Boeing 787-9s and I saw it at Paine Field during test flying.  It came in from the south and executed a go around from relatively low level.

Then they caught me out by heading north to turn and make an approach from the opposite direction.  This required some rather swift repositioning by me.  In fact, I got to the parking lot as they were on final approach and, rather than park, I just pulled to the side, ran up the bank, grabbed the shot and then got back in the car to park properly.  It was tight but it worked out okay.

My First Attempt at Focus Stacking

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I first read about focus stacking a long time ago and I have been meaning to try it for ages.  The premise is to take a series of shots with the focus set in different positions throughout the scene and then to use software to blend the images together to create on image with focus all the way through the shot.  This seemed like a simple thing to have a try with but I never got around to having a go.  Then I came across a situation that looked like it might be a good example to try.

I was visiting a model show at the Museum of Flight.  I was taking a few photos of some of the more expertly crafted models on display.  I was shooting with a longer lens and using a relatively small aperture to try and minimize the shallow depth of field that you get when shooting small objects close up.  I decided to shoot a model of a Fairey Gannet and the shallow depth of field triggered something in the deep recesses of my brain about focus stacking.  Of course, I had not planned for this so no tripod and just an effort to get focus on different parts of the model without moving the camera too much.

I took the shots and got on with my visit.  When I got home, I almost forgot about the stacking experiment but, fortunately, I did remember.  I exported the images to Photoshop as layers of the same shot.  Then, since they were hand held, I did an Auto-Align action to get them in place.  After that, Auto-Blend was selected.  It seemed to realize that they were a blend stack rather than a panorama – quite clever – and the software quickly did its thing.  Despite not taking too many shots and do it all hand held, the result came out pretty well.  The top shot is the finished product while the lower two show the extremes of the focus range for the original shots.  If I had managed a shot focused right on the back of the fin, the result may have been a bit better still.

Pegasus Testing with the Hornet (and it’s not raining)

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My luck with KC-46s and bad weather broke recently with a Pegasus launching out of Boeing Field on a glorious day.  It was carrying out trials work with a US Navy Hornet.  This jet was the subject of its own post.  The KC-46 followed it down the runway.  It rotated in a good location and the light was so much nicer than I have had recently so I was very happy to get shots of it as it climbed out and headed off to the airspace set aside for testing.

Bandon Beach

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We did a bit of a road trip while in Oregon.  I was interested in seeing Bandon Beach again – we went there about ten years before but I didn’t remember much about it – and it was a couple of hours down the coast but we had a day when the weather was forecast to start out average and get better.  Therefore, a road trip seemed like a good idea.  It was quite fun seeing the different scenery as we headed down the coast but, after a while, the highway moved inland and we were getting a different type of view (or none at all for some parts of it).

We got to Bandon and checked out the view from different parts of the coastline.  However, while the light was pretty good, I had not anticipated just how windy it was going to be.  As I stood on the overlook checking out the beach, I was getting absolutely pummeled by the wind.  It was hard to stand upright let alone hold the camera steady.  Of course, if the picture ends up being sharp, there is nothing in it that would indicate how the conditions were.

Bandon is like a lot of the Oregon coastline in that it has large rock stacks sitting on or just off the beach.  These make the area rather popular with landscape photographers.  An early morning start and the use of tripods and strong neutral density filters is going to be pretty common here I would imagine.  That was not what I was here for.  I didn’t even venture down to the beach.  Given how hard the wind was blowing, it didn’t seem like it would be the relaxing beach stroll that I would have liked so I was content to enjoy the view from up on the bluffs.  Besides, we had the drive back to consider as well.

Antonov Hanging Around on the Ground

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I have shot a lot of AN124 Ruslan movements in recent years whether in the Bay Area or now we are in Seattle.  I am still happy to see them, of course, but something a little different is welcome.  When I arrived in LA, there was one parked up on the ramp near the museum.  I figured it would be gone by the time I was back for my helicopter flight but I was wrong.  It was still there.  Consequently, I was happy with a few new views on a familiar beast.

My Friends the Eels

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Nancy thinks I am nuts (probably for many reasons) but one of them is because I find eels fascinating.  Most aquariums seem to have some eels on display and I love to look at them.  Very often they are pretty reticent about coming out, preferring to stay in their crevices keeping an eye out for something tasty.  However, at the aquarium in Newport, the eels were a lot more active.

They were either swimming about (including clattering in to each other) or they were in a hole but coming out of it regularly to see what was going on.  I have never seen them so active.  Needless to say, I got a bunch of pictures as well as trying some video of them.  Not often that they are so mobile.

Salty Dog Hornet Goes Tanking

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The never-ending test program for the KC-46 Pegasus involves testing with a variety of receiver aircraft.  Recently, the Navy has deployed jets to Boeing Field to work with the tankers.  While I was there, it was a Boeing F/A-18D Hornet that was sent across.  Operating with the call-sign, Salty Dog, the Hornet blasted out of the field ahead of its tanker.  They were scheduled to be up until after dark so I didn’t hang around for their return.