The arboretum in Seattle is unsurprisingly home to many interesting varieties of trees and plants. One tree that caught my eye was (perhaps) a type of willow that had bark that peeled to reveal an intense red coloration beneath. Sometimes these colors don’t seem to show up as well in an image but I fortunately had a polarizer with me and that took out some of the reflection and glare and allowed the color to show up well. Cropping in tighter seemed to make more sense, too.
One of my goals for going to the air show at Abbotsford this year was to see a Cormorant fly. I know this would sound like my normal interest in the bird species but this time it means the AW101 version that is flown for Search and Rescue by Canada. Sure, I have seen plenty of 101s over the years with the British and Italian examples, but I have never seen a Canadian one before. It was due to display during the show. When I got there, I was delighted to see it sitting on the operating ramp.
However, my optimism was unjustified. There was no announcement during the show about what had happened to the SAR demo, but it just didn’t happen. The day shows did get the demo, but the Friday evening show was a no go. It was a fun show, so I wasn’t too disappointed, but it was a little frustrating to still have never seen a Cormorant airborne. One day…
For the first of my animal related posts from our trip to Kenya and Tanzania, I am going to go with the apex predator – the lions. When we saw our first lion, I was so excited. It was off in the distance that a bunch of lions from a pride were hanging out. A young cub was running around but everything was far away. However, this was just a taster. Before too long, we were right in amongst a pride of lions. They were youngsters one the whole and playing around. One was resting and it turned out to be nursing an injury.
From this point on, we just saw more and more lions. Sometimes they were far away but often they were very close. Usually they were doing nothing. Sleeping during the day is a regular occupation and hunting is something that they prefer to do at night. We came across a solo male (surprisingly close to the spot we had stopped for lunch) and he was quite injured after a battle of some sort. He could look either imposing or vulnerable depending on the moment.
We also came across mating pairs on a couple of occasions. One of these pairs was out on the grass on a sunny day with the light making the male look totally serene. Their lack of interest in us was hard to get used to. (Step out of the vehicle and things would change rapidly!). I liked getting shots of them sleeping too as they often looked like they were in uncomfortable positions. However, a quick opening of the eye would transform the shot.
It was easy to get a bit blasé about the lions after a while. We saw so many and in a variety of locations that it was easy to forget that these were lions for goodness sake! Don’t ever forget that. Now, as I look back through the shots, I am reminded of just how lucky I am and how amazing this was.
The time between me doing something and its appearance on the blog can vary wildly. Sometimes, I will aim to get something squeezed in here soon after it happens but that is the exception. Usually, I have stuff posted out quite far in advance. As I come up with new topics, they get added to the schedule and, if a topic doesn’t get written about promptly, it can really disappear into the distance. Such is the case with the Concrete fly in of 2023.
There will be several posts that make it on here from that event in the coming weeks. I have started writing them up but some of the specific topics will take a while to appear. However, I shall start things off with a more general post about the fly in. Held at Mears Field in the interestingly names town of Concrete, it is a popular gathering of planes from around the region. There is a single runway running east/west in the valley and the planes park up on either side of it. You are able to walk across the runway at a couple of locations (or further away from them if you want to avoid the air cadets) so just keep you head on a swivel. The wind seems to change midway through the day, so arrivals were from the west in the morning and the east in the afternoon.
We set up at a spot near the threshold on the eastern end of the field and it provides a good location to watch the landings and the takeoff rolls. Sometimes, it is easy to forget that you can walk around, and you find you have stayed in one place for ages getting similar shots. I did try and mix it up from time to time but it was rather sunny and warm and the shade under the wing of a 170 was pretty appealing.
Since I was shooting a lot of light aircraft, I decided to try and make the shots more interesting by keeping the shutter speed low to emphasize speed. The downside the this is that you are very close to the runway so the parallax effect is quite pronounced. You can also just miss a ton of shots but why not have some fun. Few of them are ones you can’t afford to miss. It does mean a sharp nose is probably combined with a blurry fin. This will really annoy some viewers and others will never notice. Since I am shooting for me, I’m the only one that has to care!
More to come of some specific planes and events from the day out with a regular crew of aviation loons.
Honeywell’s Boeing 757 demonstrator has been on the blog before. I caught it at Paine Field during some awful weather. More recently, it was back in Seattle and I managed to get it again. This time the weather was a little better. It was actually getting a bit of a tour of the region in with passes at Paine Field, SEA and Boeing Field. I thought I was going to be in the wrong place for it but I was fortunate enough to catch it twice in one flight.
I was at SEA as it came in on the outer runway. A little bit close in on the underside but I figured it would show off the unusual pylon for engine testing that is mounted on the upper side of the front fuselage. It wasn’t landing there, though. It then continued on and headed for Boeing Field. They changed the flow direction around the same time so I was actually able to make it back to Boeing Field before it landed there. It did then park up at Modern for the day.
I was asked back to cover a soccer tournament between different regions of WSDOT. I went to the tournament last year when it took place on a very hot day with smoke in the air. This year there was no smoke but it did turn out to be a warm and sunny day. I was pretty worn out pacing the sidelines to get shots so I imagine the competitors were done by the end of things. My goal was to try and get shots of most of the participants in reasonably interesting actions. Not always possible but people want to see a shot of themselves so hopefully most of them will find themselves in there somewhere.
There is a web gallery I made for them which you can check out below should you be interested. However, unless you know the people, you probably won’t be. However, I did get a few shots that I thought were not bad as stand alone images and they are included here. Shooting footie is not my specialty but it was a reasonable way to spend a day.
Photographing airliners can be a little “samey” since there are lots of very similar jets and getting a shot of them from the side looks much like any other shot unless the aircraft is specially painted or the lighting is particularly unusual. Consequently, every once in a while, it is fun to try and shoot from a different angle. The approach to SEA when the planes are on a southerly flow brings them in over a part of Burien where you can get yourself pretty much under the flightpath.
It won’t take too long before you are again getting a sequence of repetitive images, so it isn’t going to be useful for much time, but it is a chance to do something a little different. Head on shots from a distance are possible. Then you can get the shot looking up from the underside. This might be a tight shot of a part of the airframe, or a wide angle shot of the whole thing. An opportunity to do something a little different when you are photographing aircraft that are not ones where you care about missing the shot as you might when something special is coming in.
We undertook a big trip this year. Years of thinking about it but doing nothing were replaced with finally heading on a safari. We started and finished in Kenya and spent a good chunk of time in Tanzania too. This was a pretty photo heavy trip. I have pictures of wildlife, scenery, people, you name it. However, I suspect I would become rather unpopular if the blog for the next few months was nothing other than safari posts.
Consequently, I am going to try and moderate my use of those images in the coming weeks and months. There are definitely going to be some posts on various animals and scenes but, the goal is to try and not overdo this. I don’t want people rolling their eyes at yet another safari post. There will be some safari related aviation too, of course. In the meantime, here are a few shots from the trip to start the ball rolling. I will say, it was a truly amazing trip and one I am so glad we made.
It’s not unusual to see Canadian A320s in Boeing Field. They provide a lot of sports charters but, until recently, these were usually undertaken by Jetz aircraft. More recently, it seems that they have transitioned to jets in the Air Canada core colors. Since Air Canada has been taking delivery of lots of 737 Max aircraft recently, maybe they are cascading some of the older mainline jets to the charter operations. I don’t really know. I only know I have shot a few of their aircraft at Boeing Field recently.
This is a perfect example of my ignorance regarding some of the things I see. The Italian Day at Exotics@RTC was on and this meant a bunch of Ferraris of varying vintages. In the prime spot at the center of the event was a Ferrari Dino. I may not know much about Ferraris, but I do know that the Dino was a famous car. There were actually a few of them scattered around. I don’t know whether prime spots were based on when they arrived or whether one of these is more important than another. Is one more authentic or was it just luck? Maybe some of you know.
