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Freighter Frenzy

A recent post mentioned an evening at Boeing Field in Seattle. With nice evening light, this is a great place to shoot. Not only is the warm evening light in exactly the right diction, the field is situated at the bottom of a hill that provides a far more interesting backdrop for shots than a clear sky. Also, the variety of traffic is very good. Today, I shall focus on the bigger freighters. The airport is a base for UPS and DHL and also has a variety of other freight traffic.

With so many airlines vanishing and the variety of aircraft types diminishing, freighters provide an interesting level of diversity. First they are different operators, even if UPS and FedEx are pretty ubiquitous. Also, they tend to operate older types so aircraft that are in the twilight of their passenger careers may show up more often. This trip was not going to deliver too many exotic types with 757s and 767s still being regulars in passenger service but it won’t be too long before they start to disappear.

Irrespective, it is nice to see something a little different and to shoot them in nice light and at a nice location is even better.

Sunset at Ray’s

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Traveling for work also means trying to find somewhere nice to eat. What a tough life, you may say, but being on the road a lot means trying to find good food without eating too much becomes a challenge. During the winter months, having a nice view is not too relevant since it is always dark before you get to dinner. However, now the evenings are longer, finding a good view can also help as long as the food is good.

A good combination in Seattle is Ray’s Boathouse. This is not a restaurant review. Instead, it is a chance to see a nice evening view out over the water of Puget Sound. The upstairs of the restaurant has a simpler (and cheaper) menu but it also has a deck outside. As the sun set, I was not the only person out grabbing photos. With very little cloud (I know, this is Seattle right?), the sky couldn’t really goo too red but it was still a very nice spot to end the day.

I also shot a wide panorama which you can see in more detail here.

Not so long ago, this would have been boring

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One evening after work I had some time to hang out at King County Airport, oath wise known as Boeing Field. In the evening light, this is a nice place to observe aviation. It has quite a variety of activity and, with quite a lot of freight activity focused later in the day, getting there after work can be productive. I shall tell more about the other movements in upcoming posts. Today is focus on one of those things that the passage of time brings. There was a Boeing 737 and I was excited by it. Why? It was a 200 series jet. For many years these were the only type of 737 around and, even when the 300 series came along, they were still very common.

As a sign of my age, I remember when the 200 series was called the “classic” compared to the newer 300-500 series jets. Now those are called classic compared to the NG jets. With the 7X, 8X and 9X coming along, will the NG now become classic and the previous two generations will need a different moniker? Anyway, 200s are not terribly common anymore so seeing one getting regular use was a nice change. It has a cargo door in the forward fuselage which, I suspect, it didn’t have earlier in its life. I hope it has a good few years left.

Gratuitous Cute Gosling Images

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During a short break on a trip to Seattle, I was visiting a spot that has an aviation theme which should come as no surprise to anyone. While I was down at the south end of Lake Union, I was surrounded by geese. Since geese are unbelievably abundant these days, that is not so unusual. What I hadn’t counted on was that spring gets to Seattle a lot earlier than it does Chicago. As a result, one pair of geese already had a bunch of goslings in tow.

They looked pretty young and got a lot of attention from passers by. I am not immune to cute baby animals so grabbed a few shots of the family as they wandered around. It might not be quite kittens playing with balls of yarn but I guess I am getting close!

What a Nice Roof

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Some of my travels take me to Oakland. There, I visit a building called the Rotunda. It is a quite striking building internally and I have grabbed a number of shots of it and played with 360 panoramas as well. However, this time I was just focused on looking straight up. Too often we put things in the context of our viewpoint so we see the areas leading up to the roof. This time I just looked straight up and cut out everything on the sides. Consequently, I found my eye did not wander but homed in on the glass roof itself. It really is very cool.

More SFO Activity

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The head on shots weren’t the only ones I got at SFO. Rather than go to Coyote Point, I decided to hang around by the Bay near the airport. Here you don’t get as close to the aircraft but you do get to see them land and also hope for a parallel approach or two. One problem with being further away is heat haze.

I thought I might be okay on this trip. It wasn’t particularly warm (although the sun was out) and the tide was in so, rather than mud flats between you and the planes, there was a lot of water which means less heat haze. However, I guess the power of the sun was going to win. Haze was a lot more of a problem than I expected and the shots are okay but not terribly usable.

However, it was nice to spend some time out in the sun watching planes so I can’t really complain. There were a few interesting things to see including the first JetBlue A320 fitted with Sharklets and a United 737 in a retro Continental scheme.

Some Bay Birds

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Shooting down by the Bay in San Francisco always provides lots of bird activity. This time there was plenty going on including one flock that decided to fly around in front of me just as something interesting was taking off. However, they also provide a chance to shoot something different while waiting for the planes to move. I have done this on many occasions including here.

This time there was one bird that looked particularly interesting to me. I have tried looking it up and my book of birds suggests it might be a Western Grebe. I am not an ornithologist so don’t take this as a fact but it certainly looks like that. However, some bird species look identical to a non-expert like me so I can’t say for sure.

We also had a flock of shore birds swooping around. They were a mix of different types and I will make no effort to identify them. However, the business of the group is what attracted my attention. There were also gulls, of course, but they provide good practice for tracking!

More Head On Attempts

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During a previous visit to San Francisco I had a go at shooting head on departures and wrote about it here. I also tried some head on shots at O’Hare and that made it on to the blog here. I was back in San Francisco for another project and the weather was a little better so I decided to have another go.

This time, the light was a lot better but there were other conditions to deal with. Nice weather tends to bring with it more heat haze. This was certainly true here since the aircraft are coming across a heavily developed area that radiates a lot of warmth on a sunny day.

Additionally, the wind was obviously beneficial to departures as a few of the heavies were going off the cross runway rather than coming towards me. This is a pretty unusual occurrence although not totally unknown. However, it is pretty frustrating to see the big jets going away from you when they are the majority of traffic you can expect. However, I did get a few corporate jets coming my way which helped a little.

Despite all of this, it was still a productive shoot and I got a few good pictures before the light started to give up entirely.

Point Reyes

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A trip across the hills from Napa and we made our way to Point Reyes. This is a place we have visited before and I find it very appealing. The shoreline is quite rugged and the sea pounded the cliffs or rolling in on the beaches is very nice. The lighthouse on the headland is a great place to visit. What we didn’t realize when heading over is that we were arriving when the visitor numbers are high. Apparently, gray whales migrate north at this time and, since the parking lot at the lighthouse normally only has to cope with less than 20 cars and can’t handle many more, they close off access and run a shuttle up. This upset our timings a little but we went with the flow.

Our expectations of seeing the whales was limited. We have not always had good luck seeing whales. However, low expectations seem to help as we saw several making their way around the headland. We also got to enjoy the rest of the scenery. Getting a photo of the whales is tricky. I didn’t have a very long lens but the first sign is when they spout upon surfacing before they dive back under. The spouting is the shot that you really need to make it clear what is happening and you can’t usually get the camera on them until they have already blown. However, this wasn’t the reason for the visit so I took the whale sightings as a happy bonus.

And It’s Attached

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You should have seen the video of the move by now. The effort to float the new span into place was pretty impressive. The joints are a tight tolerance to be met but you are moving a large barge with a tug to get them there and those are not the most subtle of tools. however, a combination of the big pushes from the tug and putting lines on to the other moored barges allowed the team to carefully control the position of the barge and get the span in to place.

This was a popular thing. It happened mid morning on a sunny day so plenty of people came out to see it. TV crews were running around near me filming it and I was trying to get along the river to get different angles while still having the time lapse running in one spot (and hopefully nobody stealing the camera on the tripod while I am not looking). The TV camera operator I was chatting to was a lot of fun. They had been told to come out but not told too much. However, they were glad to be watching something fun rather than filming the less happy sides of city news.

With the barge in place, the crews got to work attaching the span. The first task was the bolt the lower spar in to place. The crews were climbing over these area getting the bolts in place. There seemed to be a large contingent of people standing watching this happen. Far more seemed to be watching rather actually doing anything at this point but I imagine a fair number of city people wanted to see such a high profile job get done.

The last step would be to put the remaining structure in place to complete the truss. That had to be done so the span could then support itself.