Struggling With the Kingfishers

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There are two birds that have a good record of thwarting me when I am trying to get shots of them. The Flicker in one and some recent luck with them will appear on this blog before too long. The other is the kingfisher, and I was hoping that I might have some better luck when Nancy and I headed over to Ballard Locks one Sunday afternoon. There are quite a few kingfishers that live along the water at the locks, and they aren’t so tricky to find because their calls are loud and distinctive and are often a sign that they are flying or about to. They aren’t the stealthiest of birds.

Then again, they don’t need to be too stealthy. They are quick and agile so I imagine that they can do well when it comes to avoiding predators. I don’t know if they have many predators but good luck to them if they do since it would seem to be hard work to get one. Photographing them is hard enough! Getting good shots of them is tricky because they are small and fast. You need a long lens, but you also need to get them in the viewfinder to track them. I was making use of technology to overcome inability. The 200-800 meant I had plenty of reach and the R3 has some amazing focusing capabilities. Basically, I had no excuse because I was the weak link in the chain.

The birds were not totally cooperative, but they did give me a fair chance. Most of the time they would be flying off in the distance, but they would come close sometimes. Then they would trick me. One would take off and fly away and I would be busy track it as another flew right in front of me. I was convinced that they were taunting me. On a few occasions, though, I managed to get a tracking solution on one long enough to get focus and a few shots. The results were surprisingly pleasing. US kingfishers are not as colorful as European kingfishers and they are a bit larger, but the shape is similar, and they do make for an interesting subject. I’ll have to come back on a sunny day sometime to have another go.

The Dolphin is Nice and Close

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The location I choose to go to for watching Seafair is very close to where the Coast Guard keeps their MH-65 Dolphin. They participate in the display, but I guess they can also be used if any emergencies occur. They park the helicopter on an area that juts out into the lake. It is normally a sparking lot but is closed off for their use during the show. There is fencing around the area to keep us out of the way. During the show I was slightly further north but had a good view of them as they crewed up and departed and then returned after their display.

One everything was over, I moved close to the location because I knew that they would be heading off for the overnight before returning for the following day’s display. This was a good opportunity to get a closer view of them as they crewed in, started up and took off. The fencing was a bit of a nuisance, but the uneven ground meant it was possible to find some gaps where the fence elements were not tight together.

It was nice that, unlike during the display itself, when they departed away from us towards the south end of Lake Washington, this time they turned around and head north along the lake shoreline. This gave us a great view of the helicopter as it climbed away.

Is This Really the Road?

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Once we had crossed the border into Canada, we traveled for a while before arriving at Radium Springs. Here we took a turn into the Kootenay National Park which also provides the main road up towards Banff. As we made the turn and took the entrance into the park, I was convinced that something was wrong. We were driving right at a cliff. Sure, there appeared to be a crack in the cliff but that surely couldn’t be the road. However, that is exactly what it was. The road ran through this tiny gap and into the valley beyond. It was quite a stunning way to enter a park!

Conair Q400 Water Drop Testing

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I went to Abbotsford for the day to see the arrivals of the planes for an event on the airport that weekend. Abbotsford is also home to Conair with them undertaking conversion of aircraft for firefighting duties as well as maintaining their in service fleet. They have a fleet of de Havilland Canada DHC8-400s that have been converted to waterbombing duties for fighting wildfires. One of them was undertaking some test flying while I was there.

It took off while I was waiting for some other arrivals and then started undertaking a series of water drops at the far end of the field. I did try getting some shots of it, but it was far away, and the heat haze was brutal, so this was not going to be a good result. After eight drops, they landed and taxied back to the ramp. Fortunately, later in the afternoon, they came back out for some more runs. This time, since I was about to leave anyway, I headed to the other end of the field to get some shots of the test drops.

Unfortunately, the weather became rather damp, and I was standing out trying to get some shots without getting drenched. Seeing something like this without being in a dangerous spot where real fires are raging was a nice bonus. I did also try a little video while I was at it so that is lower down too.

Fall Foliage for the Bothell Maples

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The road on which our office was located when I first moved to the PNW has some lovely trees. As fall gets underway, these trees can turn a lovely shade of red. They attract a large number of people that come to photograph them or photograph themselves in front of them. The favored spot for doing this is in the middle of the road and it is strange how unaware some of the people are that they are standing on an active road with cars coming either side of them regularly.

Most of the drivers know the area is popular at this time of year but some do get rather frustrated by the almost suicidal approach of the wandering photographers. I am a touch more cautious as I walk along the street. There is plenty of opportunity to walk out and get a shot and then retreat rather than just loiter in the way. I don’t think the trees were at peak color when we swung by but they certainly looked nice. Will I get back for a second look? We shall see…

S-2 Airframes Lined Up in the Evening Light

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Davis Monthan AFB in Tucson is well known as the storage location for hundreds/thousands of airframes that may either return to service or may provide spare parts for airframes still in service. Just outside the perimeter of the base are some privately owned facilities that also have a lot of old airframes. Whether they will provide parts to support operations somewhere or will ultimately just become scrap metal, I don’t know. One of these facilities has an extensive collection of S-2 airframes. They are lined up in rows and, as the evening light came in, they looked particularly interesting. A longer lens allowed some compression of the perspective for these aircraft and their bare metal picked up the light nicely. I imagine none of these will ever be flying again but I hope they survive for a long time.

A Small But Creepy Spider

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Another post that will creep out a bunch of my family. Look away now if you don’t like spiders! I was spending more time in the garden trying to get good shot so the bees that were all over our flowers. I saw something small move on one of the plants and it turned out to be a tiny spider. I am not sure whether it was trying to catch the pollinators that were coming to the flowers or it was doing something different. Fortunately, the autofocus seemed to do a really good job of identifying the spider and focusing on it. Since eyes are the things that the autofocus hunts for, it had plenty to work with. The little creature is probably not the most endearing thing around but it is pretty interesting.

My Luck with the Snowbirds Continues to Go Downhill

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Last year, when I went to the Abbotsford Air Show, the Snowbirds were displaying with eight jets instead of nine. There had been an issue with one of the crew and they were completing the season down a jet. When I headed to Comox this year for the show, I was hoping to get a full display from the Snowbirds. That was not going to be the case. On arrival, my friend Mark advised me that one of the pilots had injured an arm in a non-aviation related accident. Oh well, I thought.

Then, when they started up for the display, one of the jets wouldn’t play ball. I thought they might run to a spare jet but, no, we were down another jet. This meant we would only have seven jets for the display. Surprisingly, this didn’t cause as many issues in my shots as I thought it might. The four ship cross was gone which was disappointing but, when shooting tightly on the formations, things actually seemed to look okay. In fact, sometimes it stopped me having to worry about getting the whole formation in shot since they had “cropped” for me.

It was a pretty good display and I enjoyed watching it. Here is a selection of shots from the day.

A Brief Visit to Spokane

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The beginning of our vacation involved a decent drive, and our route took us right by Spokane. We may have lived here for over seven years, but we haven’t been to Spokane in that time. In fact, we have been there before but only to the airport which we staged through for a trip we made back when we lived in Chicago. A hotel airport doesn’t really count as visiting a city. Since we had built some time into our schedule, we made a diversion into the center of the city to have a look around.

I had heard about the falls in the middle of the city and that there was some nice development along the river, so we headed for that area. Turned out to be a really nice afternoon to be walking around the river so we had got quite lucky. There are some other parts of our visit that will justify their own posts in due course so I shall just start with some shots of the falls and some of the buildings in the areas that we saw. I shall add more of the sights in due course.

Great Access for the Takeoff and Recovery

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I didn’t get to see the F-15s when they did the flyover for the Huskies game, but the Sunday gave me a chance to head out and see what might be possible to shoot. I bumped into my friend, Jeff, at the spot I was hoping to try, and it was immediately clear it would not work because a bunch of spare 737s had been parked in the line of sight. With the weather being overcast, we both decided to head across to the terminal to see what our options were.

Then Jeff found out his friend, Clint, was working on the field that day and was happy to give us a ride. The F-15s had already fired up so we were a bit concerned whether we could meet up with him in time or not. However, it is always a long time between engine start and taxiing and Clint came and got us with plenty of time to spare. We stopped at one location to photograph the jets taxiing towards us but a bizjet pulled out in front of them, so we made tracks to the other side of the field.

We picked a spot which we thought would be good for them having already rotated and then waited. They were lined up behind the bizjet and it was waiting for its airways release so, eventually the tower had them taxi across the runway to make space for the F-15s to launch. They then lined up and were blasting past us. I hadn’t brought any hearing protection and things were a touch loud, but it was brief. I was a little foolish playing with some low shutter speeds but a few of the shots worked out well. The second jet kept things nice and low so the photographers further down the field would have been very happy.

Before they would return, Clint had some tasks to perform so he took us along while he sorted out what needed to be done. We kept the football commentary on the radio so we would know when the flyover had taken place. Then the jets came back into sight stopping across the lower end of the city before they lined up for landing. We picked a spot close to where we expected touchdown and, again, got lucky. The second jet even obliged with the speedbrake – a bit like their original arrival.

What a fantastic bit of luck and thanks to Clint and Jeff for allowing me to tag along. There is nothing quite like seeing these jets at close quarter.