The view from the top of Culver Down is usually good (provided you aren’t in cloud) so we took a trip up there while I was visiting mum. While there was a lot of rain and cloud coming through as a result of the storm system, there was also a fair bit of sun illuminating parts of the countryside when a gap in the clouds showed up. From that location, you could see where the sun was running to. Whether looking down at the windmill, across to the harbor or spotting the Ledge (a nasty rocky outcrop just below the surface of the sea that has claimed many an unlucky sailor), the light was interesting. The rainbow certainly didn’t hurt either.
This Korean Air 787-9 Dreamliner is seen taking off one Saturday afternoon from Paine Field on a production flight test. It was lightly loaded so it was off the ground pretty rapidly and was already cleaning up the gear as it came toward me. The wheels are braked before the gear comes up to stop them spinning before they enter the bay. This can result in a burst of brake dust that blows clear in the slipstream and the shadow of the brake dust showed up clearly. As they continued the climb out, they actually lowered the gear again. I think this was to cool the brakes given they had done a high-speed taxi run prior to the takeoff.
Highway 101 passes Hecata Head and crosses a river before entering a tunnel through the cliffs. The bridge is a pretty elegant structure. Unfortunately, winter is not a good time to try and photograph it. It is tucked in amongst the hills and the sun will only be on it when in the west and probably only in the middle of summer when it gets a lot further north. I had to work with what we had in the shade. Playing around with exposures and working with some HDR processing did allow me to bring a bit more punch to the shots which I felt represented more of what I actually saw while I was there.
Night photo shoots are becoming more popular these days. The Flying Heritage Combat Armor Museum (FHCAM) held one with the de Havilland Mosquito. The evening started out with the plane on the ramp when people were free to wander around the aircraft. I was shooting a lot of long exposures using the tripod which does a good job of removing the people provided they keep moving. However, a few people were hanging around for long periods so they show up in the shots. Others were using the flashes on their cameras or flashlights to look at stuff which made things blow out.
Once we were all cleared from the ramp, one of the FHCAM crew came out to talk about the aircraft. He was the one that would carry out the engine runs and he ran through the test procedures that would be followed for the engines. People had the chance to ask questions and get a good understanding of the plane and how it is operated.
Then came the fun. The engines were fired up in sequence. Then they were run through the test program. The blue flame from the exhaust stacks could be clearly seen in the very dark conditions. When the mag checks were carried out, the flames were even more conspicuous. I moved around a bit to get some different positions. I was quite surprised to see how blurred some of the shots were. The aircraft clearly moves a lot despite being chocked and so some of the shots were totally unusable. This was a lesson learned. In future I would focus on shortening the exposure times a lot to minimize this issue which I hadn’t anticipated.
I also shot a bunch of video while the runs were underway. The edited video is below. It was a fun evening and thanks to FHCAM for holding it. It would be fun to do on another type. It might be nice to have a touch more light on the ramp but the dark conditions did have some advantages. I discovered a bit about shooting in that environment which should hopefully help on future night shoots.
After our lunch in Tacoma, we took a quick stroll around the area before heading home. There is a glass museum which looks like something that will be a source for another day trip. To get to the museum, we walked across a bridge of glass. There were glass sculptures at one end of the bridge and, on the bridge itself, there was a roof structure that incorporated multiple glass pieces.
Mounting the glass in the roof meant that light could be let in from above and the glass was illuminated from behind. As the daylight was drawing to a close, this meant that some nice soft light was filtering through the colors giving a great effect. We were spot on with our timing. When we walked back, the light was gone.
Since moving to Seattle, I have seen an airline that I had never heard of before Xiamen Airlines is a Chinese airline but their livery looks a lot like Kuwait Airlines and that was what I initially thought it was when I first saw one. Since then I have seen a few in the air and now recognize them. It’s not the most exciting scheme in service but I guess I recognize it now so that must have some value.
The shores of Puget Sound provide plenty of places to explore. One of these was a beach in Shoreline, a town that is quite appropriately named. I was actually about to head back to the car when this event occurred. As I walked up the path I saw people coming in the opposite direction. I thought they had a dog with them and that it was swimming in the water alongside them. Then I realized that the head in the water was not a dog but instead was a sealion.
The sealion was very close in to the shore and seemed to be quite interested in what was going on. I turned back around and headed to the water as it came closer. There were some old wood pilings in the water and the sealion came in to those, almost as if they provided a measure of protection. Then it paused before turning around and swimming back in the other direction. Shortly thereafter, it dipped under the surface and swam away. By this point, a few people had stopped to watch its progress. A sealion is hardly a rarity but it is interesting just how much attention it garners all the same.
The SR-71 Blackbird provided a reconnaissance platform that was unmatched. It would have been pretty high in the sensitivity list when it came to its sensors and capabilities. Now the jets are all retired. The example that is in the Evergreen Aerospace Museum has one of the sensors extracted from the sensor bay and mounted on a stand in front of the aircraft. I imagine there was a time when this was something that would not be available for me to look at but now, I guess, this is just another obsolete piece of tech.
The Sounder commuter rail service takes passengers from both north and south of Seattle in to the city. The service from the south end is a very popular one and is expanding. The northern service from Everett has not been as popular and is not growing in the same way. However, on both routes, special trains are run on days with big sporting events such as the Seahawks playing at home. There is normally no service on the weekends so this is an unusual sight.
I was after some Sounder shots for possible use in a future project so headed down to Shoreline where the trains run alongside the beach. The beach is accessed by a footbridge over the tracks. It has some good sightlines for shots but also fencing that is not so helpful. I tried out a location further down and close to the tracks and it was not a bad spot. Since two trains were heading to the game about 15 minutes apart, I did go back to the bridge to see how that looked too.
As the train was past me, I could continue to watch it as it ran along the shore a good portion of the way to the city. It did go around a headland but again popped into view as it got closer to the downtown area.
The disappearance of the 747 from the world’s airline fleets continues apace. The most recent company to bid the Queen of the Skies farewell is Delta. Delta did operate 747s in the early days but its current fleet was acquired as a result of the takeover of Northwest. Northwest has operated plenty of 747s over the years and was the launch operator of the 747-400. They continued to operate older generation freighters for a number of years too.
Delta carried out a farewell tour for the type and it included a visit to Seattle. Prior to going to SeaTac, the plane stopped off at Everett, the place where it, and every 747 before or since, was built. It was a dismal day with low cloud and rain. The plane emerged from the clag on final approach and zipped low over the threshold to touch down before reversing thrust in a cloud of spray. It parked up at the Boeing facility next to the Future of Flight Museum where it stayed for a few hours before heading to SeaTac.
Here are a few shots of the Northwest/Delta aircraft I have photographed along with the farewell tour jet as it landed at Everett.
The view from the top of Culver Down is usually good (provided you aren’t in cloud) so we took a trip up there while I was visiting mum. While there was a lot of rain and cloud coming through as a result of the storm system, there was also a fair bit of sun illuminating parts of the countryside when a gap in the clouds showed up. From that location, you could see where the sun was running to. Whether looking down at the windmill, across to the harbor or spotting the Ledge (a nasty rocky outcrop just below the surface of the sea that has claimed many an unlucky sailor), the light was interesting. The rainbow certainly didn’t hurt either.
