Botanic Garden

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The Botanic Garden in Balboa Park is apparently one of the most popular visitor locations in the city. It isn’t hard to see why since it is densely packed with all manner of vegetation, much of which is beautiful to look at. From tiny plants and delicate orchids to great ferns and palms, there is plenty for the visitor to see. And, there are plenty of visitors! The place has never been quiet whenever I have been there and this visit was certainly no exception.

Not only is it a popular place for people, the local wildlife also seems to like what it has to offer. Birds are flying around at the entrance all the time. I also saw a pretty cool looking caterpillar on a plant just outside the door. I don’t know whether it considered the plant life inside to be tastier and couldn’t get in or whether it was happy munching on what it had. It certainly seemed to be well fed, though.

The garden is not huge so, with everyone squeezed in, it feels pretty busy. Some people are looking at everything, others seem to be just enjoying the overall ambience. For many of the children it seemed to be a chance to see how many of the signs they could ignore by standing on things that weren’t to be stood on or touching things that were not supposed to be touched! I enjoyed the shape and style of the building as much as the plants. It calls out for playing with either a really wide angle lens or a longer lens to compress features. I had to make do with what I had with me.

Bald Eagles

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Our days in Chicago put me within reach of some great opportunities to photograph bald eagles. The rivers in Illinois often freeze during the winter and any locations where the water stays open are popular with birds that need access to fish. The lock and dam complexes along the big rivers provide the perfect places since they water flowing over the dam makes for an ice free spot and it doesn’t hurt that the fish can often get stunned as they come over the dam which makes them an easy target for the eagles.

I made a number of trips out to photograph the birds. Starved Rock State Park was the first place we tried and, while we saw a lot off eagles and they were not too far away, the lighting was pretty unfriendly. Some further research showed that the Mississippi from Dubuque down to the Quad Cities was a better bet and I ended up making several trips out there. The first time we stayed out there and incorporated the search for the birds into our visit. Latterly, I knew where to go and made a day trip from Chicago. I also learned to not worry about getting there early but to focus on being there at the end of the day when the light was at its best. Even so, you never knew whether you would have good weather, cooperation wind and whether there would be many birds.

I have been there when there were more birds than I could count. I have also been there when it is pretty sparse. However, it has never been a total bust. You get both immature and adult birds. Depending on how much ice there is, they can be scattered along the river or confined to near your location. After trying a few spots, I ended up at Lock and Dam 14 with a bunch of guys I knew. Photographing birds in the winter seems to be a popular pastime for guys who spend their summers photographing planes!

The shots here were taken across a number of visits. Now we have moved west, I doubt I shall be back at this location for a while. However, I have some great memories of being there and also testing the qualities of cold weather clothing, gloves, hand and feet warmers and camera batteries! Good times.

Edwards AFB 1990

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My first visit to the United States was in 1990. I had just graduated from university and was joining my Dad on a trip he was making at the time. I was to meet up with him in Los Angeles and travel around California before ending up in San Francisco for a week. Since I had a date to meet him but no previous constraints, I made the flight out a couple of days early so I could go and explore. Where did I want to go? How could I not come this far and not visit Edwards AFB.

A famous flight test center, seen of many records, home of some unusual aircraft, Edwards was a place I really wanted to see. In those days, there were two tours available. The Air Force had a tour in the morning and NASA had a tour in the afternoon. Make an early start and you could cover both with ease.

The Air Force tour included a bus ride along the side of the flightline. You didn’t get to step outside near the active jets but they did take us out onto the lakebed and to see a few of the stored aircraft that would be part of the museum in years to come. The flightline was full of F-16s and F-4s with F-111s and other jets scattered amongst them. So much that is now gone was on show. This was also just after the YF-23 had been rolled out. We were told we couldn’t take any pictures of it if we happened to see it but sadly it was tucked away while we were there. It would be a long time before I finally saw one for real.

After lunch it was over to the NASA part of the base. This was paradise for someone like me. So many test aircraft either in maintenance or storage. There was an SR-71 in one hangar, plenty of F/A-18 Hornets (including the HARV demonstrator and another airframe that appeared to have been used for mocking up the engine paddles), F-104s, an F-15, the HiMAT and, out in the storage lot, the supercritical F-8 and the Sikorsky RSRA all stuck in a fenced off area. I missed some other things I would liked to have seen including the X-29, X-31 and the STOL/MTD F-15 but it was still an impressive lineup.

The end of the 80s was a great time with so many programs funded. It might not have been as diverse as the 50s and 60s but it was still great to go there when so much was to be seen. These days, visits require a lot more planning and the number of types in use has dwindled. However, it is still worth a trip and another post shall cover that.

Wind and Kite Surfing

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It was a pretty windy day when I was at Coyote Point. This had brought out anybody in the Bay Area with either a windsurfing board or kite-boarding gear. They had to work pretty hard because the wind was certainly not making the conditions good for novices. A couple of time, I saw people create a slightly larger cloud of spray than normal as they plowed in. However, on the whole, they seemed to know what they were up to.

From my vantage point on the headland, I could see them well and the long lens allowed things to get a bit compressed. Even so, on some occasions it did appear that they were trying hard to all get in my shot at once. Thanks for the effort guys!

DC-3 Gathering

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I have occasionally stumbled on to events that I really should have known about. One such time was a gathering of DC-3s that took place at Rock Falls in Illinois. About 90 minutes from Chicago, this was something I should have known about but didn’t. My friend Paul Filmer apparently knew because he was there. I only found out about it when I heard he had arrived. I already had plans so figured I wouldn’t go. I had arranged to shoot some motorbike riders off-roading in an area not so far away. As it happened, one of the riders was also an autogyro pilot. When we wrapped up the bike shoot, he asked if I wanted to go for a flight. Guess what my answer was.

While we were airborne, we came across one of the DC-3s flying in the local area. He asked if we wanted to follow it so we did. We had talked about heading to Rock Falls before we got airborne anyway. I had texted Paul to watch out for me arriving in a gyro and he thought I was kidding. Once we arrived in the pattern, he realized it was for real.

I got a chance to get some shots of the arrayed Douglas planes as we made our approach. Then, once on the ground, we were able to wander through the ranks of planes. They were in varying conditions with some in pristine shape and others looking like they were after someone with some time and money to bring them back. A couple of the planes were for sale.

It was a fine collection of planes and, since Rock Falls is not terribly close to a major town, it wasn’t over crowded with visitors. There were plenty of people there but you were not fighting for space. I met up with Paul for a chat and took in all there was to see before my pilot decided it was a good time to head home. A pretty fortuitous turn of events since I had not thought I was going to see any of this when I got up that morning.

Biggest Sailing Boat

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From where we were staying on Coronado, we could see some boats moored up on the San Diego side of the bay. One of them appeared to have a very large mast. When we took the ferry across to go for dinner, we ended up coming in past this boat. It was a huge vessel with a phenomenal mast. I only had the phone but compiled this pano from a couple of shots from the ferry. There was no way to get the mast in the shot too. I looked the boat up afterwards. It is apparently the largest single-masted sailing boat ever built. (It appears to have been built not far from where I grew up!) It used to be available for charter operations but now seems to be privately owned. It is called M5 and you can see more about it here if you are interested. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabella_V

Planes of Fame Review

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After a period of relative inactivity, I have been a bit busier recently on getting material together for GAR. After a piece on the tenth anniversary of the first flight of the A380 and a review of Dream Machines at Half Moon Bay, I had my first real show of the year. I took a trip down to Chino for the Planes of Fame show. This was the first time I had been to this show, despite the fact it is one of the highlights of the airshow calendar.

The piece went live on GAR recently and can be found at this link. http://www.globalaviationresource.com/v2/2015/05/12/airshow-review…e-airshow-2015/. Meanwhile, here are a few shots that I liked from the event. I will say how much I enjoyed the access you had at this place and it was a very pleasant change not to be herded out as soon as the flying stopped. It was also a lot of fun to hang with Mark, Kev and Jim. Their company made a good weekend great and also meant I didn’t miss the sunset show! Cheers guys.

RHDR

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There are plenty of historic railways in the UK but most of them are a tourist attraction and operate at limited speed to allow people to experience something from days gone by. However, there is a slightly more unusual railway on the Kent coast. The Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway runs along the Kent coast from Hythe down to Dungeness. It is a narrow gauge railway that, while popular with tourist, does provide a year round service. It is even contracted by the council to take kids to a local school.

The railway has been in operation for decades. In the Second World War they even had an armored train for coastal defense. The service was restored after the war. Most of the locomotives date from before the war and are outstanding scale steam locos. These are a few shots I got of the trains from a crossing in Hythe about ten years ago.

Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery

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One spot I had never been to while in San Diego was the Cabrillo National Monument up on the northwest end of the bay. The drive to the point takes you through a lot of older naval installations. It also takes you right through the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery. On our way back from the headland, we stopped at the cemetery to take a look around. It sits on both sides of the road and extends a long way in each direction.

Military cemeteries, wherever they are, are always thought provoking places. The uniformity of the layout and the headstones combines with their scale to be quite overwhelming. While many of those buried there died in service, a lot of the headstones were far more recently dated as they were the resting places of veterans of long ago that had more recently died. Many of these also included the spouse of the person.

The location up on the ridge overlooking the water in both directions is a beautiful spot and, as last resting places go, I suspect it ranks pretty highly. We certainly weren’t alone in visiting the cemetery. If you find yourself in that area and have some time, I would recommend going.

Heavy Departures Over the Beach

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LAX is undergoing a multi-year program of rebuilding their runways. They have to make some federally mandated upgrades and they are taking the chance to relocate runway and taxiway alignments to accommodate the A380 more efficiently. This means that one of the four runways is going to be out of use for a long time. At the moment, it is one of the runways on the south side of the field which is the part most easily seen from Imperial Hill. Therefore, I decided to try something new for me which was shooting from the beach.

Most departures head out over the beach from LAS unless the winds are doing something unusual. For aircraft heading off the northerly runways, this is the only place to get a good view and, since those runways are located further west, the jets are lower as they come out. The hills along the shore used to be a series of streets which provided a perfect location for watching the jets. However, this whole area has now been closed off and is inaccessible. It is designated a nature reserve although I bet a few security issues helped with the process.

I hadn’t been down this way before so didn’t know exactly where to go. The combination of the hill and fencing makes the view a little restrictive. However, you can get some interesting angles on the jets as they take off. If the weather is nice, you also get some lovely evening light here although my visit coincided with a fair bit of cloud! I was also constantly guessing the flightpath to avoid the places with palm trees and fences – not always successfully. I include one shot through the fence to show you what you see, even if it isn’t good for getting a shot.

I saw a few of the big jets head out which was quite a bit of fun. If I find myself back, I will have a bit of further exploration down here to see what better spots (and weather hopefully) I can find.