Alaska Airlines never wanted the Airbus fleet that it inherited when it bought Virgin America. They did operate them for a long time and they did get repainted in Alaska colors but first the A319s were withdrawn and now the A320s are gone. The A321neos will follow before long but here is a sample of the A320s that are now consigned to history.
In some previous posts I have discussed how aggressive the red-winged blackbirds can be towards the great blue herons. The herons are quite happy to eat the chicks of the blackbirds, so the aggression is justified. One of the herons was flying in my direction when a blackbird swooped down at it. It came in from above and behind and started to attack the heron. I got a sequence of shots as this evolved and my favorite is one where it actually looks like the blackbird is riding the heron. If only it had some reins!
One weekend, I was at Boeing Field awaiting something interesting. There was the regular traffic of business jets and, since they were pretty standard fair and the light wasn’t great anyway, I figured I would play with dropping the shutter speed super low. The R3 is great for this because I can select a frame rate of 30fps if I want. When shooting with silly shutter speeds, really high frame rates increase the chance that I might get something that isn’t terrible. Technology overcomes lack of talent!
I was dropping down to 1/50th or 1/60th of a second for some of the arrivals. I was using a polarizer to take out a load of light to allow such low shutter speeds on a sunny afternoon. It also didn’t hurt to reduce the glare with the sun so strong. Most shots were worthless but there were a few that came out okay. Full size there were more acceptable ones but, since I was experimenting, I focused on the ones that were really sharp. Such low shutter speeds do result in parallax issues which is not ideal, so I tend to look for the sharpness to be on the front fuselage unless the plane is going well away from me. There were some 737s on test too, so I played with the same techniques for them as well. Maybe I shall go even lower at some point.
Our walk through the City last fall brought us out at St Paul’s. It wasn’t part of our itinerary and is somewhere we have been before but it wasn’t like me to pass a landmark without taking some pictures. The strange thing about shooting St Paul’s is that it is hemmed in on most sides with other buildings. It has some space around it but not much given the size of the building. Consequently, I was shooting some tighter shots to see what I could get.
One of the bigger attractions at the Antelope Valley Air Show, held at Edwards AFB, was the appearance of the Darkstar plane from Top Gun Maverick. Obviously not a real plane (and not even the real Darkstar which was a reconnaissance UAV that never progressed beyond testing), it was part of a hugely popular movie so garnered a ton of attention. It was parked in the static display alongside a very real SR-71 Blackbird. This was something I found far more interesting having seen them fly for real in my younger days. The Darkstar was still fun to see. I am not that churlish.
My visit to Cattle Point in search of foxes had me trekking along the cliff tops hoping to spot some creatures on the prowl. I met a local couple that suggested they normally saw foxes further along the coast and so I headed that way. As I kept moving, I did get some wildlife encounters but it was with bald eagles rather than foxes. They were soaring along the cliff tops using the updrafts. At one point, one popped up over the edge close to me and stared at me briefly before gliding on. I was too slow to pick up the camera and instead watched it fly by. I did catch some of its compatriots later in my walk, though. If I’m not getting foxes, eagles are okay but I can get them at home!
The repainting of the Salmon Thirty Salmon jet caught a lot of attention and was the subject of a previous post. The jet was not destined to be in standard Alaska Airliners colors, though. Instead, it went to be painted in a special livery that has a salmon connection. This time it is adopting a native theme to the painting. The name is Xáat Kwáani which means Salmon People. It was unveiled in an event in Anchorage and made a couple of flights within Alaska before coming home to Seattle. It arrived on a Friday evening so plenty of people were out after work to catch it landing. I’m sure I’ll see it again plenty of times but it was nice to get it on a lovely evening.
When we lived in the UK, Nancy and I spent a weekend in Bristol as part of a visit to the balloon fiesta that is held there (or at least it was then – I don’t know whether it is still a big event or not). As part of that visit, we did head up to Clifton which sits on the hills overlooking the center of Bristol. The area is most famous for the Clifton Suspension Bridge spanning the gorge in which the River Avon runs. Built by engineers based on a design that Brunel had originally proposed, it is quite a structure although the movement you feel in it as you walk across it is a little unsettling.
As you walk along the river from the harbor, you come around to get a good view from the underside of the bridge high above. We walked up this way to get a little closer and I accepted the cloudy day for what it was and got some photos of the bridge. You are walking along the river but also a rather busy road so it isn’t the most relaxing way to spend some time. However, I did get a view from below to match the ones from above from our previous trip.
During our stay in Longparish, we could hear the sound of helicopters on a regular basis. We weren’t far from both RAF Odiham and Middle Wallop so getting military movements was to be expected. Getting a camera to hand when they came over was another thing. However, while on one walk, we did see a Royal Navy Merlin operating across the fields and behind some trees. Getting a clear look at it was very difficult and, as we got closer to where it was on our walk, it naturally moved off somewhere else. I never got a good shot. Here is the best I could manage as they taunted me by remaining just out of reach.
Our wanderings through the lanes of Longparish took us past a bunch of fields filled with sheep. When they are young, sheep are super cute. As they get older, not so much! Also, my encounters with them over the years have suggested that they aren’t the brightest of creatures. Doesn’t stop me finding them interesting, though. These guys were munching their way around the fields, hiding under trees, licking tree trunks for some reason and occasionally coming close to the road to see who it was that was the other side of the fence. There was no way I wasn’t going to take some pictures of them!
