Tag Archives: photo

South Park Sculpture

I parked up in the South Park area south of Seattle when I was off to get some shots of the large stored 737 Max population. I walked across the bridge to see the planes but I was also rather taken with a sculpture that was sitting on the sidewalk. It was a multi layered creation with an angler fish style design with many more intricate elements built in to the structure of the fish shape. It was striking. There were lots of distracting background elements near the sculpture which I didn’t want in the shot so I decided to shoot close up to it with lots of shots and then combine them into a pano when I got home.

Nice T-38 Surprise

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A Beale AFB T-38 was parked over at the FBO when I was at Boeing Field. The canopies were up which gave me optimism but you never know whether they are just doing something to the jet or maybe haven’t long arrived. When the crew walked out to the jet, I realized it was good news. They taxied to the other end of the field and I waited. A nice low departure kept them below the skyline of the hill beyond the field and I was happy with a slightly unusual visitor being photographed.

Exotic Doesn’t Always Mean Expensive

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Exotics@RTC does attract many types of vehicles. Neither of these little vehicles will be competing for the attention of the Lambos or McLarens but they still get a few people checking them out. Hard to believe vehicles so small have ever been sold in the US. They would fit in the trunk of some older cars or could go in the back of a large minivan! Kind of interesting all the same.

How Slow Can I Go With the Turboprops?

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Shooting Dash 8s and Q400s at YVR is not going to be particularly interesting so I was able to spend some time playing with shutter speeds progressively lower and lower. Shooting very low shutter speeds on the 500mm handheld is a bit of a crapshoot but you never know what you might get. Besides, the evening light meant it wasn’t so bright that you were at ridiculous apertures with the associated endless dust spotting!

I was quite prepared to have got absolutely nothing from these shots. However, either my luck was good or my technique has improved – I think we both know which it is – and I got a few sharp ones with plenty of prop blur and background blur combined. Background blur always makes for a more interesting shot. However, when you want to make sure you get the shot, you aren’t always willing to risk it. Having something that is not a make or break shot means you can have a lot more leeway for experimentation.

Ferrari F40

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Super cars have come a long way. Now they are ridiculously powerful and also very technologically advanced. A supercar from the 80s has a very sparse feel to it in comparison. Coming across a Ferrari F40 was quite a throwback for me. I saw my first F40 when I was a student. It was parked in a mews street in Kensington near a pub I used to frequent (that doesn’t narrow it down much). I was shocked to see one then and I still am a little shocked now. This one was not getting as much interest as I thought it was due but I was happy not to have it surrounded by people.

A DHL Delivery But to Them Rather Than By Them

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A lot of freighters come out of Everett these days. All 747s are now freighters as are the 767s. The 777 passenger variants are a regular feature but there is quite a demand for 777Fs too. I saw one go to DHL not long ago. They have some aircraft already in service but they are in a hybrid scheme. This was the first one to be delivered in the full DHL yellow colors. It taxied out and went to the other end of the field for a northerly departure which meant we got a good view of it airborne. The short delivery flight across the US meant it was rather light so it got airborne quickly and was a long way up by the time it got to us again!

Porsche 928 Takes Me Back to My Youth

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I have mentioned that I am not much of a Porsche guy but my college years did include rather a penchant for the Porsche 928. This was a car I could really have enjoyed has a huge amount of cash come my way at the time. The later models, like the S4 and the GT, were something that looked super cool to me. Seeing a rather racy looking 928 at Redmond was a very pleasant surprise. Annoyingly, a lot of people seemed to be around it while looking in the opposite direction so I struggled to get some shots of it but managed to find a way to get a few. I wonder if it goes as well as it looks?

Lots of Max Jets in Storage

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The grounding of the 737 Max fleet has resulted in plenty of parked jets. I have shown them at Paine Field but Boeing Field seems to be a big storage location. The employee parking lot has been turned into a 737 parking lot. I have seen jets over there before either awaiting engines or from customers that can’t pay but nothing on this scale.

I took a trip to South Park so I could walk across the bridge and get a good view down into the storage area. I made a rough count and think there were probably over fifty jets stored there. While Boeing cut the production rate after the grounding, they only took it down to 42 a month so jets are still coming out at a prodigious rate. This area is full so, aside from Paine Field and Renton, I believe they are flying them to other storage locations.

Staring at an Escalator

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I was waiting for some visitors at the airport. At SeaTac, you stand at the top of the escalator waiting for people to come out from the shuttle station. I was starting at the escalator for quite some time and decided to see just how slow a shot I could take with the cellphone. Using ProShot, I have a lot of shutter speed control but the brightness does eventually overwhelm things a bit. However, it was still possible to play with some interesting effects with the steps blurring out along with anyone standing on them!

Reverser Close Up

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When you get lots of similar jets arriving, you can mess around a bit. The 500mm was far too long for the touchdown shots for most aircraft but, when you are getting a bunch of Air Canada A320s, no harm in cropping in really tight on some of them. The CFM-56 reversers are a bucket type so they splay out from the nacelle. With the evening light, you can see lots of detail in the structure. I played with a similar effect on some of the other jets too.