Tag Archives: california

Trains Along the Bayshore

Having had a post with a train in it, I was reminded that I had actually photographed some trains a while back and they had never made it on to the blog. It was actually a work related reason I was out there. I was waiting for the delivery of a pair of our locos (a delivery that was o late it was after the light had gone) but, since we often need imagery for proposals, I thought it would be good to get some new shots.

The location is up in Pinole. The trains are running along the shore of the bay so it provides a quite photogenic location. A number of Amtrak California trains came through. Since these trains are part of my work, I found myself checking out what was in each train and what condition it was in. I guess I have been doing this for too long! Anyway, here are some train pictures.

Going Further Gets You There Quicker

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The title of this post is a pretty weak premise for the pictures I am posting. The pictures are of Air India Boeing 777-200LRs. In the pictures, they are not doing anything special. However, I shall justify the pictures with a slightly interesting fact. Air India has been serving SFO for a while. It is a long flight from Delhi to San Francisco and they were looking in to alternative routes. A lot of negotiation ensued that finally allowed a polar route to be used. This route is nearly 1,000nm longer than the route that they were previously flying. However, the prevailing winds on the longer route are helping the jet along. The result is that the longer route is actually two hours quicker. Strange but true.

Korean A330 Aiming for the Keys

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After watching a few aircraft making their approaches, you get a feel for how high the jets will be at a given point. Any variation from this seems pretty different, even if it is not really that large. A Korean Air A330 made its approach and it seemed noticeably lower to me. There was a displaced threshold in operation so maybe they were aiming a bit closer to the piano keys than normal. They didn’t do anything untoward but it did catch my attention.

The Raccoon Family Outing

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As a Brit living in the USA, there are certain animals that, when you see them, seem most unusual because you don’t have them on the other side of the pond. Some of these are large creatures which people who grew up here are still fascinated by like bison. Others, though, are not so interesting to the natives. Raccoons seem to fit that bill. They are more of a pest to most people. To me, they are more exotic. As we were walking through Golden Gate Park, we came upon a family of raccoons alongside the trail. They seemed totally uninterested in the people walking by and more bothered about feeding. However, the click of the shutter was obviously enough to get their attention as they all perked up and stopped what they were doing when I took some shots. This didn’t last long, though, and they were quickly back to eating.

Welcome Back from Hawaii

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Hawaiian Airlines are a regular feature of the Northern California aviation scene. Whether it is SFO or OAK, their jets are a regular feature. I was awaiting a movement coming in to Oakland when a Hawaiian A330 came over the top. Initially I wondered where it was going but it turns out that it was making a wide turn back in to Oakland. A short while later it showed up again on the approach. Annoyingly, it had passed the moon as it went over the top but I was too slow to catch it.

Evening Over the North of the Bay

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These shots come from a little while back. When you are doing an air to air session, there is a fair bit of spare time. Unless you head out and back in formation, you have the transit time to yourself sitting in e back of the camera ship. You can stare out of the open door and see what is drifting by. We were heading back to Sonoma and so I got a great view towards the north end of the bay. The light was dropping down as evening came in so the hills and the marshes looked really pretty.

The Unusual Oakland Approach

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Over the last few years I have flown in and out of Oakland more times than I can recall. It has been my transit point for the majority of my travels. A recent return brought me a new experience there though. The airport is in two halves. There is a main runway alongside the bay which is used by the airliners and is often the departure runway for the bizjets. Then there are two further runways that are over near the old airport infrastructure. These are used by light aircraft and for the arrival of bizjets. (There is another intersecting runway but that doesn’t factor in this story.)

The normal approach brings you across the shoreline and over the water on the approach. The other runways are on a different alignment and the approach comes over the local towns. I was looking out of the window and filming a hyperlapse. I was a bit confused as I was seeing bits of San Leandro that I don’t normally see and we didn’t pass Hayward Airport. We continued to descend over land and it was pretty clear we were not heading for the normal runway. Sure enough we touched down on the old part of the airport prior to taxiing back and all the way across through the freight area back to the terminal. I watched jets depart from the runway we had just landed on as well as from the normal runway so I have no idea what was going on. I doubt I will experience this again anytime soon.

A Quick Walk Around the Museum

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After Hobbo had finished his talk and was setting up for autographs, I took a quick wander around the main floor of the museum. Some exhibits were gone to make space for the presentation but there were still plenty of cars on show. Things have been rearranged since my previous visit which I wrote about here. I knew that time was tight for me and I would need to go but I did get a few shots of some of the cars before calling time and heading home.

Early Morning Over the East Bay

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When flying to the east coast, the combination of flight time and time zone changes means that an early start is a good idea. My flight took off from Oakland just after the sun came up so the view across the east bay was one full of warm morning light and long shadows with the occasional scattered cloud or fog bank. It looked really cool. I was only shooting with my phone (although sometimes this is actually better since the small lens can fit between the distortion of the average airliner window) but you could still get a good idea of interesting variation in light that the hills get that early in the morning. The lakes scattered throughout the hills also would reflect dramatically at that time of day so it all looked rather appealing. There is something slightly ironic about seeing everything look so nice when you are leaving!

Time Lapse Up the Old Tower

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My trip up the tower at SFO got me thinking about what things I wanted to get done while I was there. One thing I had in mind was a time lapse. I was a bit bothered, though, because we would only have about 20 minutes and setting up the camera and getting it going would eat into that time. Fortunately, Nancy had just given me a new GoPro to replace the one I killed in Hawaii. This one had a time lapse function built in. Also, because it is small, it would be easier to get it close against the glass to minimize (but not totally remove) reflections.

When we got up the tower, I went straight to the window, hit the start button and leaned the camera against the glass. I had no idea whether it was working or not so just left it and hoped. I then started taking the other shots I was after. When our time was up, I had to remember to go and get it again. Only when I got home did I find out that it had taken a steady string of images. I then processed them using my usual software of LRTimelapse aided by the lens correction in Lightroom for the GoPro. The result is this video. It is a little wide angle for some of the distant action and it would have been fun to have a longer time to capture images over but, overall, it worked out quite well.