Category Archives: Travel

Reprocessing Some Backlit Shots from LAX

Every once in a while, I put together two things that I hadn’t previously connected. I have been playing around with the masking tools in Lightroom for ages to put different processing on aircraft versus the sky in the background. When I had done some photography from helicopters over LAX, the lighting had been good on the northern complex but the planes arriving and departing the south complex had been quite harshly backlit.

The processing approach I was using at that time did not make for very good results and so I had tended to ignore the shots I had taken on that side and focus on the north complex instead. Then, while looking at something from another photographer, it got me thinking that the masking tools would be a good option to revisit these backlit shots and try and get a more balanced looking image.

You can’t escape the fact that, if the original shot is not great, you aren’t ever going to turn it into something marvellous. However, there is the potential to come up with something significantly better than I had previously managed.

Selecting the airframe with a more cluttered background is a bit tougher for the automated tools so a fair bit of manual addition and subtraction was needed. However, because you are against a ground background rather than a sky, there is a certain amount of tolerance that you have for not getting the selection absolutely perfect. You don’t want glaring issues, but it won’t be as conspicuous as it is with a sky behind.

With the masking applied, it is a lot easier to come up with an exposure for the planes that looks a lot more like the eye would have perceived whilst still having a background that is okay. I can actually darken it a bit more in order to make the plane pop. On one of the shots, there was a second plane on the taxiway in the shot, so I selected it separately to give it a reasonable look without it taking over the image as a whole. This was a very satisfying process with some images I had previously left alone.

Visualise That Trailing Vortex

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I was working through some images that I had taken on my one and only visit to Rainbow Canyon when the military was still flying through that part of region. One of the shots that caught my eye was this one of a Super Hornet. It had passed me and was heading down towards the valley. This involved a few tight pulls around the curves in the canyon. A strong trailing vortex changes the density of the air which affects the refractive index. This distortion of the light makes the vortex visible if only by impacting the view of whatever is behind it. A good view of that effect can be seen in this shot.

The Ramp Action at Barcelona

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When I made a trip to Spain for work, my route took me through Barcelona. Not a city I have visited before, but I do plan to return. I hadn’t brought a main camera with me since it was a brief work trip, and I was travelling light but I did take my old M6 along with me. Going to a new location can mean some different airlines. However, these days the airlines across Europe are usually the same ones. Ryanair is everywhere of course. There were some converted freighters sitting on the opposite side of the airfield from my terminal. I grabbed a few shots in the brief time I had which wasn’t long given that the schedule was pretty tight.

The Canal Cutting in the Dark

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If you saw the previous post about the locks on the canal in Chester, you will know I was in the dark along the water. While it was very dark down there, this was a pretty busy place with people out walking their dogs or pushing their pushchairs and purchases along after some shopping in the city. I decided to walk along the canal back in the direction of the centre of town. For quite a stretch of this part of the canal, there was no lighting. A sign warned about this as you entered the darkest spot.

There was some ambient light coming down from the streets above. However, the canal course was cut into the rock so the light from above was quite a way off and things were really dark down along the path. What was slightly more concerning was that the water level was almost the same as the bank and, in the low light, it was hard to see where one ended and the other started. I was pretty cautious as I walked along.

As before at the locks, the camera was able to pick up way more detail than my eyes were seeing. There was an old bridge across the canal. According to a sign I saw further up the path, this was to connect the old prison with the chapel on the opposite side. It has since been joined by a larger bridge that carries traffic and this bridge now seems to be out of use. I was soon back out into the (relatively) lighter area and back towards the middle of Chester. As with the locks, this is somewhere I wouldn’t mind exploring in the day so I can see what it actually looks like!

Looking Back on Bones at Nellis

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I was digging through the catalogue recently. Every once in a while, I will just randomly move the slider in grid view and see what pops up. Having been taking images for a long time, there are often things that I have completely forgotten about that show up in the collection. While doing this, I came across some shots of B-1Bs launching out of Nellis when I was between the runways for a Red Flag media day. I hadn’t really done much with these images. They were a touched underexposed and I had not processed most of them.

I ended up working through a few of them as they reminded me of the amazing experience being alongside a runway when four F101 engines in full burner come by. It really does get your attention. The B-1 fleet has been shrinking in recent years, and the plan is that the remaining airframes will be retired when the B-21 fleet comes online. It won’t be too long before this sight is confined to history.

The Deep and Scary Locks

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During my evening in Chester, I walked along the city walls until I came to a place where the walls met the railway and the canal. This is a place where the terrain drops off quite quickly and, in order for the canal to make the descent, there is a pair of locks with a very deep drop. It was very dark in this area at night and there was no lighting. Nor was there any fencing around the locks. Consequently, I was very cautious as I explored them.

This was where modern camera technology came to my aid. I could see very little of what was around me, even as my eyes had adjusted to the low light conditions. My phone, on the other hand, did a phenomenal job of picking up the faint light that there was and stabilising the image to build up a usable shot. I can see things in these shots that I had no sight of at the time. I would like to go back in the day to see the locks in more detail. I did figure that, given how deep they were, you could come a cropper in there really easily if you weren’t careful.

Revisiting Boneyard Tour Shots With Reflection Removal

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I have been a bit critical of the reflection removal tool in Lightroom but, while it seems to have become less effective on some shots, it still can do the job on others. This got me thinking back to my visit to Davis Monthan AFB’s storage facilities in the days when the Pima Museum was still able to operate a bus tour of the rows of stored aircraft.

I tried my best to get clear shots through the windows of the bus and often did okay. However, when something of interest was on the opposite side, I was taking a lot more chances when trying to get a shot without any reflections in it. A friend of mine, Karl, regularly posts images from the day and month many years before and he recently had some DM shots, and this was what triggered this idea. I worked my way through some of the original shots that I wouldn’t have previously used because of the reflections. I managed to rework some of them to make something far more usable.

Chester in the Evening

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A work trip meant an overnight in Chester. I got there late in the afternoon as the light was already fading. By the time I had checked in and changed, it was dark. However, Chester is a picturesque place day or night. The many half-timbered buildings that still survive in the city centre are very attractive. Add to that the cathedral and the sculptures and you have plenty to see. I wander around taking a bunch of shots. I do think a visit again when I am free to explore will be worthwhile. In the meantime, here are some photos of the Chester by night.

Thinking Back to LAX and Old Favourites

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I’m not sure what it was that got me to these pictures. I was working on something other project and then found myself looking at some shots from a visit to LAX a long time ago. Two planes jumped out at me from that day. One was a Lufthansa A340-300 and the other was a British Airways 747-400. Both were taking off later in the day and the light was very nice. I decided both deserved a re-edit.

The backgrounds for both jets were a little busy and so I decided to try something similar to my processing for airborne shots but that I hadn’t done much on the ground. I used the smart masking tools to select the aircraft. Then I inverted the mask to select the background. This allowed me to take the lighting down for the background and also make things a little cooler with the white balance. Then I could warm up the plane a little more and brighten it up. This helps to separate the aircraft from the background and make it more the focus of the shots.

The BA fleet of 747s are long gone now and passenger 747s are definitely a rarity. The Lufthansa A340s are still operating but only because of the delays to new aircraft deliveries. It won’t be too long before they are heading to the desert. This will be a nice reminder of the fun stuff I used to be able to photograph.

A Surviving Shot Tower

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I had an overnight in Chester as part of a work trip to the region. The hotel I was staying in was just outside the centre of the city and alongside the canal. A short distance away was a shot tower and I figured I had to take a look. Shot towers were used to make shot – who’d have thought? In order to get “perfect” spheres for the shot, the molten metal was pushed through fine mesh at the top of the tower, and the drops of metal would fall. They would form a sphere as they free fell and would also cool as they fell through the air. They would have solidified by the time they reached the bottom, and you would have your shot.

Production techniques evolved over time and towers like this became redundant. Fortunately, this one has not been demolished and now it looks over the new apartment developments along the canal. The inside is illuminated and, while there is a window looking in, there is not much to be seen. I hope it is well looked after and will remain for many years to come.