A jump back to the visit of Sentimental Journey last year. Because she was here for a while, I was able to shoot from a variety of locations to try and get some different shots of her. The weather played ball while she was in Seattle unlike the conditions at Arlington the following week. It was fun to try some different angles on the same plane since I had got the initial shots I wanted.
We went through a phase at Juanita Bay when the number of coots really rocketed. They were a popular source of food for the local eagles, but they had to work for it. The coots were gathered in large groups on the water and the eagles would do their best to get one isolated so that they could pick it off. As they got close, the flocks of coots would get startled and would start flying around to evade the eagles. Watching this action from a distance was fascinating as this large number of birds tried to move as one to protect themselves. Not a time for being independent!
The movement of the ex-LATAM Airbus A350s that Delta has picked up on their way to Singapore via Seattle got me out once before. The jet was arriving after dark but I gave it a go anyway. The next one to make the move from California to Singapore came through at a more convenient time for me being both daylight and also when I wasn’t at work! The weather was not perfect but the sun did pop out which made for some reasonable lighting and it was a chance to catch a jet in LATAM colors which I probably won’t get very often.
Breeze is an airline that was recently formed by the guy that started up JetBlue. It has an initial east coast focus but is supposed to gradually expand west. We do not have scheduled service yet but they seem to also undertake charter operations. When the airline was announced, it was supposed to use Airbus A220s. I guess the pandemic made aircraft availability better and they picked up a bunch of Embraer E190s. The A220s have started to come online but the Embraers are currently the big part of the fleet.
One of them was making a trip to Boeing Field. Not sure why it was coming but I figured this was worth a look. I tracked the jet as it lined up for the approach but I hadn’t heard it call in. At some point, I heard the tower call to ask if they were on frequency and no response. At this point, it was pretty close in. I guess, without a clearance, they decided to go around. They climbed out over the field. A side effect of this was to cause a Delta 737 that was on approach to SEA to have to also go missed as the Embraer was conflicting with its flight path. I suspect they were a touch annoyed.
The Embraer then was vectored around for a second approach. On this one, everything seemed to be a lot more normal. I heard them call up a decent distance out and they were cleared to land which they did without incident. The sky blue livery is quite catching and I would like to see one of the A220s at some point soon. I wonder whether we will get service out here at some point?
I have seen deer in the grounds at Fort Casey before. When I was there recently, they were feeding on the grass near the gun emplacements. At first, I was disappointed because they were in the shadow of the emplacements as the sun got lower. This made for shots that were just not as interesting. Then, they gradually made their way out into the sun and the shots got a lot better.
What amazed me was how they really didn’t seem to give a crap about the humans wandering around near them. I was trying to get into a position where I could get a good shot but was moving very cautiously to achieve this. Then a bunch of people would walk by on the trail and the deer might look up briefly but would then return to munching. I imagine that they see people so often and are never threatened by them so are not worried at all. I could probably have walked a lot closer to them without them flinching!
One of the software tools that I find a lot of people talking about these days is DeNoise from Topaz. I have never been terribly bothered by noise in my images. Modern cameras do a pretty remarkable job of handling noise and, for most usage purposes, the noise is not really an issue if it is there. I have posted my efforts with PureRAW in its various forms where I have tried it out to see how the noise reduction comes out and, while I have seen strengths and weaknesses in it, I have never seen it as something I needed to spend on.
Lightroom Classic had one of its periodic updates recently. The big new feature was their own denoise functionality. Much like my experimentation with PureRAW, it analyzes the shot and creates a new DNG file with the noise suppressed. I was curious to see how it would perform and, seeing as it is included in the price of my subscription, I have it anyway. I decided to take some shots I had recently used for the PureRAW3 trial I had done and compare with the Lightroom version.
It defaulted to a 50 level of noise reduction. I don’t know whether this is a percentage and what of but it is a scale so I played with it. I did some at 50 and some at 75 to see whether more aggressive noise reduction had detrimental effects on other parts of the image. Comparing these things and then sharing the results is a touch tricky so I have created a single image from four layers. They are the original Lightroom develop settings, the PureRAW3 version, the 75 denoise settings and the 50 denoise settings. I mask them to make the image into four sections. Then, to make it useful on here, I have zoomed in to show the borders between them to provide some sort of comparison.
The PureRAW3 result is very aggressive on noise reduction. However, I find it can make some odd artifacts in the images where details were not that clear to begin with. The 75 setting in Lightroom provided a very similar level of noise reduction to PureRAW3. It is slightly noisier but barely enough to matter. A setting of 50 does show more noise. It is still a significant improvement over the basic Camera Raw settings and very usable.
What do I conclude from all of this? First, as I have said before when testing the PureRAW trials, it provides some interesting results but it is not relevant to enough of my work to matter to me sufficient for me to spend a bunch of money on buying it. Having denoise in Lightroom now provides me with a very similar option but within the existing price I am paying for Lightroom. Therefore, I will make use of it when the situation dictates. It would be a regular part of my workflow because really high ISO shots are only an occasional thing for me but having it there when I want it will be handy.
We took a day trip to San Juan Island. I was interested in trying to get some pictures of the foxes that live in that area. The forecast for the day was not that great but, with nothing else planned, a trip to the Islands seemed like it would be fun even if it proved to be damp. However, it didn’t prove to be damp. Instead, the weather was gorgeous. It really couldn’t have been nicer for a Sunday out.
I was wandering along the edge of the bluffs on the lookout for foxes. The results of my wildlife photography efforts will be in other posts. For these, I shall just show the views I got of the coastline. Some of these are long range shots taken with the 500mm I was carrying for the wildlife. Others are wider shots taken with the phone. Cattle Point is a really lovely part of the island and I would struggle to be bored with being in this place.
A few years ago, I was doing a photo flight over LAX and, on the south side of the airfield at one of the FBOs, a black 757 was parked with marking of the Four Seasons hotel group. This jet was used for some pretty high end tour operations. Not the sort of thing I am likely to be on! The 757 was aging and, in discussion with some friends online, I heard that they had switched to an Airbus A321neo. Lo and behold, a few days later, it came to Seattle.
I wasn’t able to get it arriving (although it came back again another time and I did then) but the departure was on a day that I was free. The jet is in a similar livery to the 757 looking black from a distance. I am not sure whether it is actually black or a deep purple color but, when the sun glints off it, there is a colorful tinge to it. Departures were to the north so it crossed the runway to taxi by me and then turned for the take off roll. They were heading to Hawaii so I imagine the guests were looking forward to some fun in the islands. The aircraft is actually operated by Titan out of the UK. I wonder whether the crews like this gig or whether it is a bit of a drag?
Once a year, the IPMS northwest group has a gathering at the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field. The modelers from around the region come with their creations to put them on display. I used to make models in my youth and have done a little bit since the pandemic started but not a huge amount and definitely not that good. I do like to go and see how good some of the work can be. I tend to focus on the aviation models but the others are of interest and anyone that has put together a diorama is going to get my attention.
Here are a bunch of shots of the various models on display that particularly caught my attention. When trying to photograph models the problem is that focus is usually very shallow and so it makes the subject look very small. I use focus stacking to try and give a clearer view of the full model and make it look slightly larger. I am doing this handheld which is not ideal and, in some cases, the shots just don’t blend well. Most of them came out okay though.
One Saturday afternoon, I was out shooting some planes approaching SEA with my buddy David. We were thinking of calling it a day but I was curious about an EMB-135 that was due in to Boeing Field. The weather was looking like it would get worse and these regional jets are hardly exciting. However, a quick search online showed some older shots of it painted white but a more recent shot of it painted gloss black. I wondered whether this was still how it looked. I told David I would give it a go as we parted.
As I waited for the jet to arrive, I really hoped it was painted black. Waiting a while in gradually degrading weather for a regional jet seemed like it might be a poor use of a Saturday afternoon. When it came in to view, I was very relieved. It was, indeed, gloss black with a hint of color on the tail. The fact that the cloud had come in actually made it easier to get a good exposure on the black finish. Once I got home, I checked out its ownership a little further and, while it was listed to a company matching the Aero on the fuselage, I think it is used by ConocoPhillips. Maybe, if you are an oil company, you paint your planes to look like crude oil?