American 767s Have Gone

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Another airline retiring another type.  This used to be an occasional topic on the blog but the massive reductions in airline service means I could probably almost pick one a day.  In this case it is American Airlines and the Boeing 767.  The 757s have also been grounded but they are not definitely retired yet so we’ll wait for a while.  Of course, by the time this post hits the page, that might have changed!

The 767-200 fleet went away a while back but I am going to include them here.  The 767-300s have been around until now.  I didn’t travel in them very much but have made the occasional trip.  I think I took one from Chicago to Manchester in the UK and definitely had a ride from SFO to JFK once.  There have probably been other times that I don’t now recall.  It has been quite a while since I was a regular with American.

All that aside, the fleet is now done.  Some may find a second life – possibly as freighters – but probably the majority will end up being parted out.  We might suddenly find 767 parts are not as in need as they were until recently but there is still a sizable fleet of freighters and there are still in production so maybe there is some value.

Lightroom Craps Out With Videos

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This is a tale of a problem I got in to with Lightroom.  I Googled solutions for this and got a bunch of suggestions but none of them worked.  In the end, Adobe sorted out the issue but I wanted to share what happened in case anyone else experiences the same issue and ends up Googling like I did.  Maybe this post will help someone out.  The source of the problem was an MP4 video file that apparently had some corruption within it.  This screwed up stuff within Lightroom that needed some detailed work to fix.  First, I shall tell you what the main error was.  This might be what someone is searching for.

Dynamic Link Media Server Failed to Launch

The result is that video files don’t import and then you seem to struggle to preview videos at all.  When you are in the Import dialog, the video preview doesn’t show and an icon of a camera comes up instead.  Some of the recommendations online were to delete the Dynamic Link Media folders in the App Data section of Windows and restart but that didn’t help.  I also tried that and deleting the media cache but no luck.  Next was to delete the Preferences folder for Lightroom which can often be a solution for unexplained problems but that didn’t work either.  That is when I got Adobe involved.

The support engineer tried a bunch of things.  Eventually, he created a new user on the machine and opened up Lightroom in there.  We tried importing a new video file from the same camera and that worked.  He then set about deleting the Lightroom related app data in my user profile and replacing it with the data from the new User.  We then tried importing the new file and it worked fine.  Next was the previous file and that caused the same problem as before.  Now we knew the file was the problem we could isolate that from everything we did afterwards.

Of course, I had damaged Lightroom again but now we knew what was required, it was a simple task to copy the folders across again.  The only downside to this was that all of my presets and information got deleted.  However, I had copied the old Lightroom folders before starting all of this.  It wasn’t too tricky to replace my camera profiles, develop presets and plugins.  At first I thought I had lost some functionality that I really like.  I have a plugin called LRInstagram which allows me to post from Lightroom to Instagram directly.  Facebook has turned off the ability to do this so, if you install the plugin now, it won’t work.  However, something about my legacy setup meant I had still been using it.  When I tried to set this up again, it failed to work.  However, my old Lightroom folder had a sub folder for the plugin which contained something like a cookie and, when I copied this across, I was back up and running!

All of this is to say, if you have a similar problem to me, there is a solution.  I won’t lay out the files that are involved because it is a bit tedious and there are some other things to bear in mind but, if this happens to you, get in touch and I will talk you through what we did.

Edwards F-16s

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Another day, another retro post.  I am pleasantly surprised by what I find as I go through old shots since I am not able to get any new shots while we are all self-isolating.  In this case it was a visit to Edwards AFB that was a pre-symposium trip ahead of an ISAP meeting.  I think Richard was the one that organized it all.  Anyway, the Edwards test fleet includes a bunch of F-16s.  Some are from the test pilot school and some are test program assets or chase planes.  There was also a Danish jet that was supporting the F-35 program.

We got to hang out on the ramp as see the jets under the shelters as well as get up close and personal as they were heading out for a mission and recovering.  We later went out to shoot near the runway which was fun but not ideal from a shooting perspective because of heat haze.  Who would have thought the Mojave Desert would have heat haze!  Still better than a day at work of course.

Here are a bunch of shots from that day.  I haven’t been through most of these for ages so it is interesting to see what upgrading them to the latest editing algorithms of Lightroom can do for the processing results.  I have yet to find one that doesn’t look better with the new processes applied.

Legislative Building at Night

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Continuing the theme of casting back into the past for shots of things that compensate for not going anywhere anymore, this one isn’t too long ago.  Our visit to Victoria in the run up to Christmas involved staying in a hotel alongside the harbor.  We had a view from our hotel room across to the legislative building which is nicely illuminated at night – not just for Christmas but all the time.  Here is the shot from the hotel window!

And Now It Is Qantas…

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I posted here about KLM retiring their 747s early as a result of the COVID-19 related pummeling that the airlines have taken.  It wasn’t long before another airline made the same announcement – this time it was Qantas.  Qantas has operated the 747s since the beginning and it is quite a shame to see that they are no more.  Here are some of my Qantas 747s from over the years.  I should note that there is a rumor that they may not be gone for good and could return.  That would be great but I suspect it will not be the case given that they didn’t have long left anyway and things are going to be rough for a while for the airlines in all probability.

Tokyo Bay’s Industrial Background

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For those that haven’t visited Tokyo before (and maybe for some that have), the image of the city is a dense metropolitan space with high rise buildings and grand structures.  There is also a lot of smaller building with offices and housing.  However, the city is also pretty industrial.  The bay has been a center for commerce for centuries and much heavy industry grew up along the waterfront and has continued to prosper.  Haneda Airport is a short ride from Tokyo’s heart and is very convenient.  It is also surrounded by industry.  When in the terminal and looking across the airfield, you get a clear idea of the amount of industry so close to the city.  This isn’t a one off either.  Head south out of the city and you lots of similar industrial spaces.

Video of Haneda in the Rain

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I posted some shots of the jets at Haneda reversing thrust and throwing up a lot of spray in the process as a result of the rain that day.  Stills can be good for showing off spray but the motion of the spray in the reverser flows is more apparent in video.  Consequently, I shot a bunch of video that day.  Only recently have I caught up with my video editing backlog courtesy of the ample time I have at home as a result of not being able to go out anywhere.  Here is a sample of the airliner movements from that day.

 

 

Changing the Blog Template

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If you are a regular reader of the blog, firstly, thank you.  Second, you will have noticed that the style has changed a bit.  I have been using the same WordPress theme since starting the blog.  I wasn’t desperate for a change but I was motivated to do something by a Facebook issue.  It used to be that I could put the link to a blog post in to Facebook and it would include the link and an image from the post – usually the first one.  The first image is usually my favorite for illustrating the topic so it gets the prime slot on the post.  However, something happened in the Facebook algorithms.  I would put in the link, the page would auto populate beneath the text with the right image and then I would hit post and it defaulted to the banner image from the theme rather than my actual image.

As a result of this, I had taken to deleting the link after it auto populated and then pasted in the main image manually.  This was a pin and it also seemed to reduce the number of people actually clicking on the post rather than just looking at the picture on Facebook.  I decided to try going to a more recent theme design to see if this fixed the issue.  I looked at a variety of them.  Some seemed okay but others were more business focused.  I selected a slightly newer theme but it still had a simple look to it which I liked.  I tested the change over and configured it as I wanted before switching.  I like the look and it now behaves better with Facebook so the whole exercise seems to have been worthwhile.

Air to Air With United Jets – Or Is It?

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When putting together some images for a group online that I am involved with, a dug out a couple of shots of jets departing O’Hare I shot years back.  When coming off 22L, some of the jets make an early turn to the south and you can get a view of them that is either quite level with the wing line or slightly above.  When shooting them, they are climbing so it is obvious what you were shooting.  However, as I looked at these shots, it occurred to me that they looked a lot like an air to air position except the angles were wrong because of the climb.  Since I had shot quite tightly, re-cropping the shot required some Photoshop work.

Taking the image out of Lightroom and in to Photoshop, I selected the crop tool and rotated the image to be the sort of angle that an air to air shot might be.  Doing this crops off the nose and tail of the jet.  However, one feature of the crop tool in Photoshop is that, if you then drag the edges of the tool back out, you can expand the canvas size.  You now have the whole plane in shot but have added some white space in each corner where no image previously existed.

It is a simple task to then use Content Aware Fill to add sky back in to these areas.  The result is a shot that looks almost as if you had been flying in formation at altitude.  Would you have spotted it?  Having done it with an A320, I then had a go with a 757.  The light angle makes it look a bit like we are flying along towards a setting sun.  I was rather pleased with the trick.

Ironbridge

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When we still lived in Lancashire, we made a trip to Shropshire to visit my uncle and his family.  As part of the visit, we went to Ironbridge.  For those not familiar with industrial architecture, this is a significant place for the bridge made of iron (you’d never have guessed) that was a major innovation at the time.  There is a great museum nearby which has old buildings and forging/casting techniques still practiced.  Here is a view of the bridge itself and the steeply sided river valley that required it.  Maybe we will get back there at some point on a future trip.  We have friends that aren’t so far away!