I have had to make a few trips to Glasgow recently and, while some of them involved the train up, I did also fly on occasion. This meant I had some time at Glasgow Airport waiting for my flight home. British Airways and EasyJet are regular features at Glasgow so nothing new about them. However, you get some visitors from Europe and Loganair has a number of turboprops based there so this was a nice chance to see something different to the norm (although I get plenty of ATRs passing the house).
We had an excellent time walking through Windsor Great Park and, while I wasn’t there chasing aircraft, there were a few opportunities to get images of some of the arrivals into Heathrow in the distance. One of these was an Azerbaijan Boeing 777. I grabbed a couple of shots of it as it came over Windsor in the distance and then thought nothing further about it. However, when I started to look through my shots, I noticed some interesting lumps and bumps on the fuselage. My thoughts were immediately that they were some form of defensive countermeasures but if anyone has any other thoughts, I’d be interested to hear them.
Our visit to the Brooklands Museum meant were were at the home of the Vickers VC-10. The museum has a complete example along with another fuselage and some test items related to the development of the aircraft that was undertaken here. The complete airframe belonged to the Sultan of Oman and it was flown into Weybridge in the late 80s before the runway was rendered unavailable. It was quite a luxurious configuration in its day but does have a rather basic look compared to what might be available today.
My Voyager ride with 101 Sqn ended back at Brize Norton and we pulled into the line with some other Voyagers. This included Vespina, the jet that is painted in national markings rather than the usual grey. We hung out on the ramp to get a group photo before heading back to the terminal. I got some shots of the Voyagers on the line while I was there (including the jet that we had just been in).
Back to a time earlier this year when I made a trip to Heathrow for a brief bit of shooting. Most of the time, I was offset from the approach path to get shots of the jet as they were on short final approach. However, I did walk along to the approach lights to get some head on shots. While there were more about getting a tight angle on the jets and some underside shots, it did also allow me to look back up the approach and see a number of jets on the glideslope or turning to line up. Heathrow is a busy place so there always seem to be jets on approach.
A stormy sky doesn’t immediately inspire you when going for some aircraft photography but, if the light on the subject can end up being okay, a dark background can suddenly seem like a great option. One Sunday an Atlas 777F was up on test at Paine Field. The sky was dark and gloomy but not a solid cloud background. Instead, the clouds were stratified so there was more detail and texture to see.
As the 777 came down the approach, it was not brightly illuminated but it was picking up a good amount of light compared to what I had expected to be the case. This did require some thought about the camera settings. When the sky is dark, I often significantly over-expose. This is because the clouds will dominate the metering response and the subject – which is usually quite dark – really disappears. In post processing I can then bring the exposure back down but there is sufficient light on the subject to get a good image of it against the sky.
In this case, I had to be more careful. With good light on the subject, the dark sky would result in blowing out the plane. Therefore, I had to keep the exposure compensation off to allow the subject to not get too overexposed and not leave enough latitude for processing it to where I wanted it to be. The results came out okay. This was more important for the longer shots. Once the plane was close in, it started to dominate the metering response and, once on the ground, the illumination was more balanced.
Once they touched down and brought in the reversers, you could see that the conditions had not long ago been wet as the runway still had plenty of water on the surface and the reversers kicked it up in the air.
If you are shooting at the time of the month when the moon is close to full, it should mean it will show up in the background at some point when you have afternoon/evening light behind you. Will it make it into your shot? Probably not. The angles the planes take vary and the moon is constantly moving in the background so, while you can anticipate it might work out at some point and hope accordingly, that doesn’t mean it will work. Of course, you can also forget about it for a while and miss a perfectly good moon shot too – who would do that though?
At various times when shooting departures are Seattle Tacoma International Airport, I did get the moon to show up in the shots. Would it be with the most interesting aircraft in the foreground? Probably not. More likely to be an Alaska Airlines jet since they are the most common departure (and also the one more likely to have made me not be getting a shot) but that is still fine. Here are some results from across various shoots.
Having Boeing on your doorstep means the chance to photograph airlines that you have a good chance of never seeing in their normal operations. Arajet, of the Dominican Republic, is one such airline. As they were taking delivery of some 737 Max jets, I was able to photograph them. On one occasion, I was out at Boeing Field when one of their jets was on test and I was looking forward to getting a shot. Unfortunately, I didn’t know it hadn’t yet been painted. Instead, I got a green plane with only the rudder and winglets giving away who the ultimate operator would be
I like the green of the unpainted jets and primer finishes on other planes also look good to me. I wasn’t so upset as a result, but it wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. Still, it looked pretty good on approach. I did get another airframe in the finished livery so I will stick that at the bottom to show what this one would ultimately look like. Not a dramatic livery but something different.
Mesa Gateway airport in Arizona does get some airline visitors. Allegiant was bringing some jets in while we were visiting early last year. GlobalX also had some coming in. Judging by how many of their jets I saw off to one side not looking too active, I assume they undertake some maintenance work there too. Not a ton of variety with these two but here are some shots of their planes. Makes a change to not show a GlobalX jet at Boeing Field!
The light at sunset can make for some of the most pleasing shots and I did used to take the time to go to Burien when SEA was on a northerly flow to get some of the heavies departing in the best light. Once the sun goes down, it is tempting to head home but I would hang around a bit longer. The blue hour could make for some pleasing shots too and even when it was getting pretty dark, the amazing low light performance of a modern camera meant you could get something different. Combine that with the super noise reduction capabilities of current processing software and you can achieve shots that would have been impossible a few years ago.
