Tag Archives: washington

Clouds in the Mountains

The North Cascades Highway gets snowed in for the winter, so we decided to take a trip up there before the snow arrived. It was also a good time for fall foliage, so we wanted to see what the mountains had to offer. The colors in the trees as we drove up were very nice but, the higher you get, the more you are into the evergreens and the foliage becomes sparse. However, we had something equally attractive awaiting us.

It was an overcast day as we drove up with any hints of sun from the lower levels gone as we got higher. There were some really cool bands of clouds to see as we drove. At one point we had the valley in sight and the tops of the mountains but a band of cloud in the middle. It was while on a stretch of road with nowhere to stop so no shots of that. However, as we got up to Diablo Lake and then Washington Pass, we got plenty of mountain tops in and out of the clouds.

I experimented with both normal shots and HDR. With the shadow of the valleys and the brightness of the clouds, the dynamic range was pretty wide, and I thought HDR might give me some more processing options. I was glad I made that choice as it really helped to get detail in all parts of the images. That will be our last trip up there this year. The snows will be getting heavy before too long and then it will be a waiting game until the pass is cleared in the spring.

Finally, The Aero 45 Is Airborne for Me

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I have seen the Aero Vodochody designed and Let Kunovice built Aero 45 before at events. However, it was always parked and never in motion. I think it is such a cool looking like aircraft and reminds me of a mini Heinkel HE-111. I really wanted to see it flying and I have had two opportunities this year to do so. First it showed up at Concrete for the fly in. This was great news as I got it landing from close proximity and then again when it took off.

It was not a lot later that the Arlington show was setting up. I wasn’t going to be at the show but I was there the day before for some warbird flying and the Aero 45 was coming in to be on static. (This was a repeat of the first time I saw it in person which was also at Arlington.). Not so close this time but another opportunity to catch it in flight. What a cool looking plane. Glad we have it up here in the PNW.

Dreamlifters Are Still Here Occasionally

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The end of production of Boeing 787s at Everett meant that there was no longer a need for the Dreamlifter operations to support Dreamliner production. However, while the Dreamlifter base has closed, there are still some production activities at Everett on the 767/KC-46 line that require large structures to be delivered and the Dreamlifters are used for this sometimes. I understand at least one of them is currently stored, but the others are active.

I only rarely find myself at Everett when the Dreamlifter is there, but it has happened a few times over the last few months. Here are a few of the shots I have got since these things became a little bit rarer up this way.

Focus Stacking the Lily Pond

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A walk in Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle took us by one of the ponds that is covered in lilies. Unlike when I was in Juanita Bay, this pond allowed me to get down to water level. This provided a far more interesting perspective across the pond to the trees behind. It did put me very close to the foreground elements so I focused stacked some shots to provide a deeper focused range across the shot. I far prefer the lower angle as it really emphasizes the foreground elements in a way that isn’t possible when higher up.

My Buddy Was Flying This

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Getting a British Airways 777-200ER arriving at SEA would not normally be a priority unless the light was great and I was going to get Mt Rainier in the background. If the weather was cloudy and it was arriving from the north, might not seem to be that much of a deal. However, if it is being flown by someone I know, that is a different story. My friend, Paul, was the skipper on this flight and I was meeting him to have some time around Seattle before he headed home the following day.

The clouds were a shame but the light wasn’t totally bad. I figured it would need a bit of work in post to try and make the best of the shots but the lack of heat haze did help a bit. I was able to grab a few shots of the jet as it came down the approach and then as it was over the threshold prior to touchdown. Not the greatest shots Paul will have of him flying but, hopefully there are not too bad.

Molds for an Unlikely Airframe

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I was up at Arlington airport to see some vintage planes one weekend and was a short distance away from the hangars that Eviation operates from. This is where they built their Alice prototype. A composite airframe, the Alice was molded on site by the look of things. All I read suggests any production aircraft will be significantly different from the prototype so the molds are probably surplus at this point.

Whether that is the case or not, at least some of them appear to now be stored outside. I took a few images of them because the shaping is quite interesting and the construction of the molds themselves is something I like to see. Tooling for an airframe is not as elegant as the airframe it will produce and it needs to be rigid to allow it to produce what is needed. Now it is no longer needed, I wonder what its future will be.

Granite Falls

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I’m not sure what it was that led to this but I happened to see Granite Falls on Google Maps one day. It is a small town about 45 minutes north of us which I will have seen the sign to on many occasions as I go up Route 9 but which I had never thought of previously. Needless to say, there are waterfalls in Granite Falls. I looked at some of the pictures on Google Maps and decided to check it out some time. We headed up one weekend to have a look.

Since it was just the beginning of Fall, there hadn’t been much rain recently. Consequently, the falls were not flowing very heavily. However, looking at the shaping of the rocks around the water, it was clear that the level can be much higher and the force of the water, substantial. The falls were in stages and, while there is a fish ladder alongside, some salmon were actually trying to leap up sections of the falls. They were infrequent so I never managed to catch one airborne with the camera.

We walked along the trails that runs the length of the falls. The cliffs on the other side are very steep and you are deep in a valley. It was difficult to really capture the scale of the place. However, I did resolve to wait for the weather to get worse and to have more run off from the mountains before making a return trip to see the falls in a more aggressive mood.

Hot Air Balloon Searching for a Landing Spot

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Nice evenings during the summer mean balloon flights over Woodinville and the surrounding area. I was driving home one evening and, as I came up I-405, I could see a balloon that looked like it might be close to home. Rather than turn towards the house, I headed for one of the nearby fields that has been a landing zone for balloons before (and that have made it into posts on here). When I got there, the balloon was close but was tracking slightly west of the field so no way it was going to make it in. It was heading towards the town so I decided to drive towards the south side of the town to see where it might end up.

I was coming around the south side on the road that skirts the town and the traffic had come to a halt. This was because everyone was watching the balloon low overhead. I actually took a shot through the sunroof of the car as it came low over me. I looped around the roundabout but didn’t take the south exit because the crew seemed to be heading that way and I didn’t need to crowd things.

I went around to the next road and looked back across the fields as the balloon continued on its way. It wasn’t touching down so I guess the area was not ideal. I figured I might head a little further south and see if it came even further. I took the road to Redmond and pulled off at one of the field entrances. Sure enough, they were still drifting south but looked like they might finally be getting close to landing. I didn’t shoot much video, but I did get a little to emphasize the way the balloon was drifting through the trees. As I watched it, the ground crew pulled up and started honking at me. They were incredibly rude. As soon as I saw them arrive, I was getting out of the way. Not my fault that they were struggling to catch their balloon, but they behaved like everyone should just get out of their way. I did anyway but, if you are reading this balloon crew, don’t be assholes to bystanders if you are struggling to recover your balloon and its passengers.

Red Bark

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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.

Concrete Fly In

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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.