When photographing bizjets, you can tend to get the same sort of shot all the time so it is nice to get something a little different. Getting close to the underside of the jet when it is on short final provides a different angle on things and can also bring in some of the scenery around the location. I did that for a Gulfstream G650 just to play around.
We get a ton of rabbits in our yard. They happily eat our grass and spread the seeds of weeds amongst our grass. We figure it is a battle we will lose so why fight it. Instead, we watch out for them. Most of the time they are chomping away on the grass. Occasionally, if it is warm or they are feeling relaxed, we might see them stretch out and take a rest. Here are some of the resting poses of rabbits. If we appear, they instantly return to alert status.
There is something interesting about amphibious planes. Whenever I come across one, I am hoping I can get a shot of it. This one was parked up tight against the fence at Renton. Shooting through the fence with my normal camera is problematic with the wire strands always being in shot and hard to remove in post. The phone lens is a better bet in this situation. I stitched a few shots together to make something usable. I liked the star formation on the fin which led me to think this one might come from Alaska.
Motorsports are dramatic enough when things are going normally but there is also the scope for more drama if things end up going awry. I saw a few of the riders end up on their sides as they came in to a sharp left hander with too much speed but these were normally relatively benign affairs with some bruises and scratched up panels on the bikes. However, early in the day, I had one more dramatic event.
I was up near Turn 5 when I heard something going wrong. I had the camera up already and the bike and rider came into the viewfinder without me really controlling things. I did then manage to track them as they headed off into the grass separately and at some speed. The bike cartwheeled around while the rider slid and rolled. He did not spring back to his feet and it took a while for the marshals to get to him and to help him up.
He walked gingerly to the marshal station to await someone coming to pick him up later. While he seemed basically intact, he certainly didn’t seem well after the incident. I didn’t hear about his condition so I hope he was okay after a bit of time to recover.
One evening, while at BFI, a couple of Max test aircraft taxied out. One was painted up in Fly Dubai colors and the other was still in primer although the rudder seemed to indicate that it will be a United jet when delivered. They both taxied out and then held on the taxiway. The primer jet was second in line and held for ages. Eventually, it took the intersection on to the runway and backtracked to the Boeing ramp. No idea what the issue was but it clearly wasn’t ready to fly. Their colleagues took off a short while before in their, apparently serviceable, jet.
Eastsound is the main town on Orcas Island. As you head out of the town center towards the eastern side of the island, you go along the shoreline of a wide bay. The tide was out as we drove over that way and there were some frames set in to a section of the beach. Clearly this is an area which would be submerged at high tide so I assume it is used to farm something. Shellfish of some sort were what I assumed but I don’t know for sure. If anyone has any suggestions as to what they might be, please let me know in the comments.
The Air Malta Max jets have been on here before. A subsidiary of Ryanair – everyone’s favorite airline – they have been stored at Renton for a while awaiting the commencement of deliveries after whatever delays have been preventing Ryanair from accepting any jets. With that now addressed, both Ryanair and Air Malta have been taking jets. Buzz still hasn’t accepted any and they still seem to be parked at Renton. I was pleased to have an Air Malta jet come in from a test flight while I was at BFI. It was an overcast day but there was a hint of light when it made its approach. Not great but better than sitting on the ground!
The mid-80s was very different to today when it came to expensive cars. Now it feels like a new super car or hypercar is being unveiled every other week. The market for big cars was obviously a lot smaller back then. One of the cars of that era was the Ferrari Testarossa. It was a beast of a car with conspicuous grilles on the side and, in an early iteration, only one wing mirror on the driver’s side.
When I come across one these days, it is always a nice reminder of my teenage years. There is one that is a regular at Exotics@RTC. It was there on a normal day and returned for the Italian Day along with some other examples. It is a car with a muscular look to it with a very wide and low profile and some flaring at the back to emphasize its features. I still think it looks great. Whether it is a fun car to drive, I have no idea.
Boeing is not having a good time of it at the moment. The 737 Max saga hurt it significantly and it is still getting in to delivering jets that have been stored for a long time. Some countries have still not cleared it to fly. Meanwhile, the 787 program is in a bit of a hole with a variety of quality problems showing up such that deliveries have almost ground to a halt. Those two programs are supposed to be cash generators at the moment which allow investment in the next program. The KC-46 is also not what you would call a success!
That program is the 777X and it is not going well either. In the aftermath of the Max problems, the certification program is getting significantly dragged out. Initially engine problems delayed first flight but now that is a distant memory as all sorts of other things are meaning that service entry is not likely until early 2024. They should have been in service last year under the original plan.
Production of the last original 777s other than freighters is now complete and production of 777X airframes is well underway. However, there is nothing to do with them for now so a steady stream of green airframes is piling up at Paine Field. The cross runway (it doesn’t seem fair to call it a runway given that Boeing has used it as a parking lot for the last decade) is now filling up with airframes with weights where the engines would be and either no wing tips or they are covered with film to disguise the customer airline markings. Line numbers are taped to the gear doors. It all looks rather familiar and sad. It will be a while before these jets are readied for customers and it will be interesting to see how many Paine Field can hold before the production line churns out even more of them than there is space for.
An old friend of mine from Chicago runs a website that covers a lot of motor racing. He asked me whether I would be interested in shooting any events that are out this way and I was happy to do so. The first good opportunity came up when MotoAmerica held motorbike racing at Shelton. I had never been to Shelton before. It is the other side of Olympia from us so not a long drive but not that close. Until this event came up, I had no idea that there was a motor racing circuit there.
Called Ridge Motorsports Park, it is a nice circuit which doubles back on itself quite a bit and makes use of some significant terrain changes. At the end of one straight is a sharp left handed which immediately drops off the side of the hill and transitions in to a right handed and then a left 180 that brings you back to the start finish straight. It reminded me of the Corkscrew at Laguna Seca.
Unfortunately, the race weekend was the same weekend that the Pacific Northwest experienced heat unlike anything it normally sees. The temperature at Shelton was 105F. Since I was spending the majority of the day outside walking around the track carrying my cameras with me, this meant I was drinking a ton of liquid. Fortunately, I could get restocked at the media center and the marshal stations also had coolers with plenty of drinks available so, while it was hot a tough, I wasn’t running out of drinks.
I have shot car racing in the past but this was my first time with bikes. They were interesting to shoot and I shall probably have some other posts about specific things I shot. One thing I found out as I went through the shots, though, was that only a few types of shot work. When shooting at the chicane, I would shoot them as they entered, transitioned and left. The transition shots looked interesting in the viewfinder but were nothing on screen. The sequence would be good video but, without the context of the motion, a waste of a shot.
Some other angles had a similar level of boring about them. You need to convert the motion and the intensity of the action. Seeing how far over the riders are lying during the corners is something else as well. It is hard to believe that they can maintain traction when so far over. Longer shots were appealing to get a different perspective, particularly when riders end up pulling the front wheel up as they power out of corners. However, hot asphalt is not your friend over longer distances so, if you want a sharp shot, you have to be close. That did have the upside of meaning there was no point lugging the 500mm around with me in that heat!
It was a bunch of fun to shoot and I would happily do it again. Dropping down to really low shutter speeds was a must for most of the shots. I used a polarizer all the time in order to avoid the aperture being super small (showing all my sensor dust) and to also address the harsher reflections that shooting in the middle of the day brings. I think a return to the Ridge is also worth a go.
