To See This You Can Hike a Long Way or…

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Big Island is not short of waterfalls. The most well-known ones attract tourists like us who will drive to see them. However, so much of the island is not close to the roads and there are rivers and falls all through this area. Our pilot was a keen hiker and he showed us his favorite falls. Apparently this trip will be a full day hike to get you in and out again. I assume this includes some time to hang out and enjoy the falls once you get there.

If you are slightly less energetic, flying over the falls in a helicopter is a lot quicker to do and certainly doesn’t tire you out as much. The location certainly looked cool though and, from above, you get less of an immersive feeling. Judging by the river we saw on our way to the falls, there are plenty of cool sights to see on the way as well. You do need to be well prepared though. Forget cell phone coverage. You are on your own out there!

Get Those Shock Waves Showing

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The Fleet Week air show in San Francisco is wrapped up by the Blue Angels. The sneak passes made by the pair are an opportunity to try and get something interesting. Since they display over the bay and the city is known for having high relative humidity, I am always hoping to get some good vapor shots. This time out, that wasn’t to be. The air seemed to be pretty dry and there was not a lot of vapor on show. However, the fast pass from left to right takes the jet in front of the hills and Alcatraz which provides some detail to show up the distortion caused by the shock-waves. The large number of boats and associated masts meant a clean shot was tricky but I got a couple I was pleased with.

Sutro Heights

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A weekend day had us over in San Francisco having a mooch around some places we haven’t visited before. I had been reading something online about Sutro Heights and wanted to check the place out. This is an overlook up on the cliffs that had been the home of a guy called (unsurprisingly) Sutro. He had built a large house on this land and added gardens around it that included statues and artworks that were available for people to visit.

The house is long demolished but the gardens have become a city park. We stopped off to look around, enjoy the view and use the place as somewhere to have our lunch. The view down to the beach below, while rather hazy when we were there, was still rather nice. You could see plenty of people having fun down on the sands. The gardens themselves were rather relaxing. You could climb up onto the area where the house had once stood and try to imagine what it had been like. A few signs included images of how things had been laid out. Given how close we were to the Cliff House, the baths and the trails, it was a little surprising how few people were there. However, it isn’t heavily signed so maybe it is easily missed. If I hadn’t read about it, we would probably never have known either.

A Different Trimotor

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EAA undertake nationwide tours where they take a Ford Trimotor to local airfields and give people the chance to experience a ride in a plane from another era. One of their regular stops is San Carlos CA. When I saw them operating there on a previous occasion (and posted about it here), they brought an airframe that I had seen a number of times before at Oshkosh and around Illinois. This time they brought a different airframe which is slightly larger and accommodates one extra passenger.

It would have been rude not to pop along at least once to see it in action. It did appear to be slightly larger to my eye but that was not a scientific assessment. The different paint finish was the real giveaway that they had brought something different. The conditions were nice to get some shots. I was planning on catching it again when it came to another local field but the weather ended up being pretty awful so this was my only encounter.

Don’t Lose Control of Your Tug Please!

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This is a bit of an old event but I thought it was worth a post. A number of years ago we took a vacation to South Pender Island in British Columbia. We stayed in a hotel by a little harbor called Poet’s Cove and I spent a lot of time watching the comings and goings of the boats and the floatplanes. One afternoon, an old tug boat approached the harbor. It was a rugged looking old beast of a boat but it looked like it had been restored for use as a private boat. It came chugging in towards the harbor, apparently ready to moor up.

What happened next is not entirely clear to me. Whether the person in charge didn’t really know what they were doing or whether there was a technical failure of some sort I do not know. Whatever it was, the tug came in at a decent speed and didn’t show any signs of slowing down. It was heading for a rather nice little cruiser that was on the end of one of the jetties and, sure enough, they plowed right into it.

The whole thing seemed to be in slow motion because, since they are boats, things don’t happen very fast but they don’t stop fast either. The cruiser had a RIB mounted on the stern – at least it originally did – and this seemed to take a lot of the visible punishment. However, judging by the sounds that were made on impact, I am imagining that some of the cruiser on the opposite side from me sustained damage I never saw.

Eventually, the tug crew got things slightly under control and backed out of the harbor and dropped anchor a short way offshore. The people on the jetty seemed to be in shock (can’t say I blame them) and then a deputation motors out to the tug to “discuss” what had happened. I watched things for a while but, once everything seemed to be under control, I retreated to the hotel to tell Nancy all about it over a beer!

Hercules Tankers at Nellis

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Red Flag 16-4 was a bit unusual in that tanker support was not what you normally see. No KC-135s were taking part. The Israeli Air Force had brought some 707s for tanking there jets. The rest of the tankers were KC-130s. An MC-130J showed up although I don’t know whether it was part of the exercise or just there coincidentally. The Spanish Air Force brought their KC-130s to support the Hornets. Seeing a camouflaged Herc is a nice change given how most of them are monotone these days. It doesn’t hurt that, since tankers tend to recover late, they came back as the light was getting very nice.

Observing the Observatories

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Driving back to our hotel from Hilo took us across the center of Big Island. This is a pretty high drive as you pass between the two big mountains of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. Mauna Kea is the home to a number of observatories. We did drive some way up the mountain to the visitor’s center. You are already at quite some altitude at this point and you could feel the lack of air when you moved too quickly. There was an option to drive all the way to the top but we had other things scheduled and didn’t make the trek up.

From the visitor center, you couldn’t actually see the observatories. However, as we drove towards the turn for the mountain, we did come to a pull off where you could see them up on the summit with the sun glinting off the domes of the larger installations. Another time I would certainly like to go all the way to the top. However, I think I shall be alone on that trip as Nancy was already feeling the effects of the altitude.

Customs Citation

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Cessna Citations are not the most exciting business jets. The original versions are particularly uninspiring with their simple design and unswept wing. Normally I might not even bother if I came across one. This example showed up at Davis Monthan while we were on the ramp and it obviously wasn’t a standard version. It belongs to the Customs people. I imagine it spends a lot of time looking at what is going on along the border. Flying out of Tucson would support that idea. I imagine the sensors on board are a lot more interesting than the plane itself.

Updating Your Keywording Standards

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I provide a number of images to stock agencies. They require keywords to tack what is in the images. This has never been a problem because I have been keywording my images for a long time. Some people keep their images in folders based on shoots but I have, for a long time, been more bothered about putting keywords in for my shots. This way I can use Lightroom to find shots of any topic really easily.

However, I have become a lot more diligent about my keywording standards in recent times. I used to not get too bothered about adding too much detail to my keywords. Now, when I am looking for something, I search on a keyword but the result doesn’t show up an image that I know I have. When I look at older shots, the keywords are rather sparse and not as specific as they would be now.

The result is that I am making an effort to improve my old keywords. This is not a quick task. I find little fixes I can make for clusters of shots and implement those. It usually triggers something else I can do. I don’t try and do everything at once. I just build a list of little tasks and tackle them one by one. I am now also more diligent about keywording new shots more aggressively. Fixing this afterwards is a lot harder so now they all get tagged with everything relevant. I hope this will eventually pay off for me.

Vipers Sneaking up on Strike Eagle

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Before I say anything else, this shot is not original. I didn’t think of this and I certainly wasn’t the first to shoot it. Indeed, it is the exact opposite. This is a shot that I have seen from other people a bunch of times but that I have never achieved. The recovery for Red Flag has a lot of jets coming home at once. Jets will break into the pattern and will be turning final when more jets are coming in to the break. You can get jets coming in overhead directly behind the jet on final turn. It looks cool but I had not got it before. This time I got lucky. I don’t know whether I am pleased with the shot or just glad that I finally happened to get it!