Tag Archives: seattle

Cargolux Turns on to the Approach

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The joy of the 200-800 lens is the ability to get some really distant shots of something when a spontaneous opportunity presents itself. I was in Seattle at the locks in Ballard when I saw the familiar shape of a 747 approaching. Since passenger 747s are few and far between these days, I figured it would be a freighter and, sure enough, the Cargolux colours were on this example. It came close overhead as it headed for the approach path to SEA.

It was well beyond our location when it started to turn south on the approach but, courtesy of the long reach of this lens, I was able to get a decent shot of it as the topside came into view during the turn. It was a bit of a gloomy winter day, so the conditions weren’t ideal. However, no big heat haze issues to reduce image quality too much – although you aren’t getting great clarity at that range. How nice it is to see a 747 these days.

Head on For GlobalX

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The GlobalX operations at Boeing Field had become a pretty regular thing so were not necessarily enough to pique my interest. However, I was passing the field when one was getting ready to depart and, since it was a cold, winter day, I figured that heat haze was not going to be too bad. As a result, I decided to go to the street at the departure end of the runway to try a head on shot. I knew they would rotate a long way from me but decided to see what the result might be.

I was quite pleased with the results with the haze being limited and, while I was shooting through a fence, there was not a significant reduction in image quality. This A320 is one that GlobalX took on after it departed the Alaska Airlines fleet. The majority of the airframe is plane white but the rudder has to be balanced after painting, so it was clearly easier to leave it with the remnants of the Alaska livery to save time and money. Not sure who was on this flight, but I imagine they were probably not there by choice.

Comparison of a Couple of Edits

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Every once in a while, while I am searching for something specific in the Lightroom catalog, I will come across a previous shot that catches my eye for some reason. This might be because it was something interesting, something I had forgotten about or just something that I think might benefit from a re-edit. Sometimes I have changed the way in which I approach edits and in others there is a new tool that has been added which I think will benefit the edit. This image was exactly that. I thought that the masking tools now in Lightroom would make for a more flexible approach to balancing the different parts of the image. I played around with it for a while. Because Lightroom allows you endless virtual copies, you can try something new out without having to lose what was there before. I then created a combination of the two edits to show how differently the same raw file can end up.

Still Don’t See Falcon 6Xs In the Air

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BFI has had a bunch of Falcon 6X visits over time and I have seen them on more than one occasion. Yet again, I found one on the ramp, this time at Modern. However, I continued my duck when it came to actual flying shots. It stayed on the ramp while I was there. Sooner or later, I will catch one flying.

Salmon Festival Activities

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I had been down to Carkeek Park to see the salmon on my way home from Seattle. I told Nancy about it and suggested we should go and have a look at the weekend. What I hadn’t counted on was that the park was having a festival that day to celebrate the salmon run. The place was absolutely heaving. The traffic was heavy yet, but some lucky break, we managed to get a parking spot relatively easily.

There were a load of stalls out for local groups and plenty of people around to explain the background to the salmon run and the impacts it has on the local ecology. Some were cleaning out some of the carcasses to gather data on the health of the fish (if you put aside that they were now dead). There was also a group of what looked like Morris dancers from the UK. One person was dressed as a salmon too. I guess the UK doesn’t have a monopoly on quirky behaviour!

More of the Vision in Nice Light

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I did include a shot of this Vision from a nice afternoon at Boeing Field when the light was really nice. As I was including it in that post, I was looking at a number of the shots I took of it and thought it was one of the better times I had shot the Vision so it might be worth a post of its own. Hence this post. The head on view of the Vision is pretty good at a distance as the distinctive V-tail configuration is shown off well.

Add to that the nice colors that Visions are often painted in and the soft and warm light, you get some good results. I don’t know whether the Vision is a good jet to own but they do seem to have sold well and are pretty common at Boeing Field. I will miss them even though I did seem to struggle getting the right conditions for them. At least I had a good encounter before I left.

Gridiron Air and Their 777s

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Sports teams started acquiring their own jets a long time ago. An older, heavily depreciated jet could make a relatively cheap investment which meant the limited usage for specialist purposes – i.e. moving a sports team to events – was viable compared to chartering a jet from an airline. You could also customize the interior. Older jets have been replaced by 767s and 777s with some NFL teams buying their own jets. I’m not sure how the ownership transitioned but some of these 777s have ended up being operated by Gridiron Air. They used to have more specific liveries but now they seem to have transitioned to a neutral paint job. Even so, a private 777 is a nice change so I got this one when it was bringing a team in for a game in Seattle. I wish I had seen it with something a bit more interesting on it though.

Fifi Ramp Tour

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While Fifi, the B-29 Superfortress, was in Seattle, they opened her up for ramp tours. Since they didn’t get to run their normal rides, this was one of the few opportunities to get some revenue while in town. I had not done a ramp tour with her before (putting aside the time I met with the crew in DuPage for an article I was writing. It isn’t a speedy process to get through her and so a good amount of time was spent in line under the wing while we waited for our turn but that was fine.

We started out going underneath into the bomb bay where there was a guide to explain about the plane. Then we climbed up into the cockpit and spent some time looking around and hearing more of the stories of the team. Then it was back outside and time to wander around and see the aircraft up close. She is a lovingly maintained aircraft and I was glad I finally bothered to do the tour.

Sunrise Skies Over Seattle

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One morning, as I left home it was still dark, but it was just getting to the time when the sun was due to creep above the horizon. As I headed south, I got treated to a wonderful red glow in the sky. Even better, there was a nice lenticular cloud sitting over the summit of Mt Rainier which was catching the morning light very nicely. There was no way that I was going to miss out on this unless the light changed so quickly that I could get somewhere to take the shot. Fortunately, that was not a problem, and the sky stayed looking great for quite some time. Mornings like this are rather special and are something to appreciate here.

What is This Max Testing?

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This 737 Max 8 was flying a few missions from BFI shortly before I left the region. At first I figured it was just another jet that, while in Ural’s colors, was likely going to another airline and needed to be repainted. However, when it taxied by me, I noticed it had an “experimental” marking on the fuselage. Then I saw that it had some instrumentation mounted in one of the windows. Apparently, it is doing something different. No idea what it is and I probably will never know.