Tag Archives: california

Blackhawk Automotive Museum

A short distance north of us is a shopping development that also includes a car museum. The Blackhawk Automotive Museum is something I have been talking about checking out for a long time. Initially, I didn’t assume that it would be terribly impressive so marked it down as something to do when I had a day with nothing much happening. Then I ended up chatting to a colleague about it one day and he told me it was a great collection so Nancy and I decided to take a look. As it happens, the place is outstanding.

The collection of vintage cars is extensive. They are a number of types that I will give their own posts in due course. The location itself is very nice with everything laid out in a very elegant fashion. We spent a ton of time looking around. What amazed me was the number of people that came and went while we were there. There are obviously lots of visitors. However, given how much there is to see, they don’t seem to spend much time looking at all it has to see.

For now, I shall share some shots showing the whole collection as well as a few of the individual cars. There will be more to come focusing on some of the manufacturers that are well represented.

Big Boys at LAX

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I was in Los Angeles a little while back and managed to get a few shots of things at LAX between other activities. This is a quick picture post. The new international terminal has been opened and the big jets are often arrayed along it at the right time of day. The thing that I find funny about this shot is that the small fin in the middle is a Lufthansa Boeing 747-8. This is not a small plane but the Airbus A380 fins make it look tiny!

Just Fishing

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This guy was having a very quiet time fishing while at Del Valle. I liked the look of him seeming so far away from everything else just contemplating the possibility of catching something.

Clipper

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A long weekend away was on the cards so we decided to head down the coast to San Diego. Just over an hour on the plane and you are there so it is a pretty easy trip for us to do. San Diego is a city with a lot of things to offer so you won’t be surprised to see a bunch of different posts showing up in the coming days that are from there. Far too much to put into one or even a couple of posts.

One afternoon we had a bit of spare time between things we had planned so we took a walk along the waterfront. This is an area designed to appeal to tourists (which, after all, we were) and it has a number of attractions playing on San Diego’s nautical heritage. One that caught Nancy’s attention was an old clipper style of ship. These were the speed demons of their age moving goods around the globe (at a pace that would now be considered impossibly slow). They were big square riggers and it was the rigging that was what impressed Nancy. The complexity of the ropes is quite something. In order to hold the high loads using the ropes of the era, they are multipled up on a pulley type of arrangement to provide the strength required. From a distance they look impossibly complex and even up close, they are still something to see.

Del Valle Regional Park

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Head south from Livermore and you get into some hilly territory beyond the vineyards. Climb over one of the ridges and you drop down into a valley flooded by a reservoir. The water is surrounded by a park that has lots of options for hiking, biking, boating and just hanging out. This is Del Valle Regional Park. We were keen to try and get some hiking in before the temperatures got too high so planned out a route that would take us up around the hills and back down to the lake.

While the park is very popular and a lot of people were along the water having picnics and swimming, it didn’t take long to get well away from everyone. To be fair, it wasn’t hard to see why. The route we took involved a very steep climb to start things off. Without having warmed up much, we were both suddenly very aware of how quickly (or not) we were going up. However, once we had reached the high point, we then had a far more relaxing path to take along the ridge. The view was fantastic and we were almost totally alone for the entire route.

Finally we dropped down to the water and had a gentle stroll back to our starting point. Meanwhile, plenty of people were enjoying the water. Kayaks and powered boats were all over the water. The edge of the water had a lot of people fishing. All in all, it seemed the image of relaxed sunny day.

USS Midway

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I was watching something on TV recently and there was some footage of the harbor in San Diego. The camera panned across the waterfront and right across the USS Midway. The Midway was a long lasting ship. She was originally built immediately after the end of WWII. A variety of upgrades and rebuilds meant that she served for nearly fifty years. She was a big ship but not as big as the Nimitz class ships in service today or Forrestal and Kitty Hawk classes. Consequently, she could not operate F-14s and was the last carrier to operate Phantoms which were replaced by F/A-18s when the Phantoms were retired.

Upon retirement, she became a museum in San Diego where you can visit her today. I took a look around a few years ago when ISAP was holding it symposium in San Diego. I got there a day early to have a look around and a bunch of us went down to see the Midway.

The collection of aircraft on board is pretty cool. There are some unusual types on display and they are arranged about the ship. The deck and hangar space provides plenty of options for the displays given the size of the air wing she used to accommodate. The deck has been used for other events including launching Kirby Chambliss during the Red Bull Air Races one year and hosting a college basketball game.

One frustrating memory of my visit relates to something not on the Midway. I had been talking with my friends about how I wanted to shoot LCACs – the hovercraft the Marines use for coming ashore. While I was up on the deck, what should I hear but an LCAC. Unfortunately, I was at the wrong end of a long flight deck so only got a passing look at the LCAC as it went by. I did get a quick shot but not one that will ever win any awards!

Should you find yourself in San Diego and you have some free time, I heartily recommend a visit to the Midway. San Diego has a lot to offer but the ship is impressive enough on its own and the collection of aircraft onboard is an added bonus.

Gear Down and Locked

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There are some shots that it is just hard to get. They are possible but it depends on what you have available. One idea that I have been trying to come up with a solution for is getting good shots of airliners as they lower their gear. The sequence for lowering the gear is pretty cool and the outline of the plane when it has flaps deployed but no gear is of interest to me too. However, to get a shot like that, you need to be high up further out on the approach. Unless you are in another aircraft, that is tricky to do.

From the normal locations on the ground, the aircraft is just too far away to get a decent shot. Not only is it in the distance and, therefore, small but you also have to cope with atmospheric disturbances like heat haze and dust in the air. It doesn’t make for a compelling shot! Instead, I decided to try something different. I would shoot the sequence of shots of the approach and then animate them. This would mean that the reduced quality of an individual shot would be lost as the sequence would require a certain amount of motion blur anyway.

What I didn’t realize until I tried this on an A380 was that this jet has an unusual gear sequence. I was looking at trying a 747 or an A380 since they are large and have interesting wing configurations when approaching to land. As it turns out, the A380 lowers the outer two gear legs first before the two center body legs come down. I had not appreciated this before trying this shot. Animating the sequence really put the computer under some pressure. Creating a file with over 100 layers and then adjusting each layer to align properly took some time and really made the machine work hard. Ultimately, I got the sequence you can see above.

Above LA

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Arriving in LA from the north brings you in to the city from an interesting direction. You come down the coast and then run in to the city before making a turn towards the west to land (assuming LAX is operating in the usual direction. You can see Van Nuys, come over Culver City south of Beverly Hills with the Hollywood sign off to the north and then pass close over the top of Downtown before making the turn. You are pretty low so have a nice angle on things as you go and, with it being later in the day in the early spring light, things aren’t as harsh as they get later in the year.

A few good views of the city as well as the race track near the airport were on offer so who was I to say no?

St Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin

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Ten years living in the heart of Chicago meant that St Patrick’s Day was treated with a certain level of trepidation. Yes, the dying of the river green was fun and there was a parade. (It was a huge parade that went on forever and could be held in some bitterly cold weather that made you wonder whether you really wanted to know what you still hadn’t seen.) However, the city got taken over by people getting hammered from breakfast to early the next morning so it wasn’t always the best place to be! You can see some of my previous writings on the day here if you wish.

Now we are in California, we live in Dublin! Okay, it isn’t that Dublin and it might not have much real connection with Ireland but it has embraced the name and made St Patrick’s Day a big event. There is a parade the then a fairground and stalls are set up in the area around the public library and the sports fields. I figured I should stroll along to see how the parade went.

While it might not be on the same scale as the Chicago parade, it was still a pretty sizable affair. Plenty of people seemed to be out lining the streets to watch it go through. The participants were a mix of groups. The various local schools had their marching bands, the emergency services participated, local groups would show off their specializations and you had some of the light-hearted elements thrown in for good measure like the Shriners in their little cars. A few horses and dogs were thrown in for good measure.

Bringing up the rear was a vintage bus and a modern bus from Wheels, the local transit agency. I was standing next to a woman who obviously worked for them but showed up after things had started and was worried she had missed them. She needn’t have worried. The weather was great – another difference from Chicago – so everyone in the parade as well as those watching seemed to be having a good time. A variety of groups were throwing goodies out to the crowd but I was on the wrong side of the road to get anything they threw. Just as well really because, while I am enthusiastic for the freebies when they are throwing them around, I always find myself wondering why I wanted the stuff shortly afterwards. However, I did get some free Pocky samples and I didn’t mind eating them at all!

Over Candlestick Park

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A previous post included some aerial photos of SFO taken as I flew out of Oakland. That departure routing also takes you over Hunters Point and then Candlestick Park. The demolition process appears to be well underway with a section of the stadium gone. I was glad to get a shot of it while it was mostly still intact. Soon it will be gone.