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Friday, October 20, 2006
Goodnight
3:31 pm est
Nightfall
As the day wore on (we're still on AA flight 156 a week ago, remember?) the sun got low in the sky and I noticed another
plane in a nearly parallel flight path. I'm always interested in seeing other planes. It's pretty unusual, in my experience,
to have such lengthy contact with another airplane. It's only happened to me perhaps one other time (short of take-off and
landing, when planes tend to get stacked up). One spectacular thing I've seen a few times is an airplane travelling in the
opposite direction on a parallel flight path. The closing speed of the two is unbelievable. You pretty much have to be looking
out the window to see it because it goes by so fast. But I digress.
Although it's impossible to tell from this photo (even in high resolution and blown up), I can tell you that this was
a Lufthansa flight. I was on the left (north) side of the plane and I first picked it up around 9 o'clock. In this photo,
it was more like 10. It eventually crossed under our plane, probably headed to Frankfurt or something.
You never know what you will get during sunset on a plane. When you are flying east, it's all much faster because you
are flying in the opposite direction of the sunset. Tonight, the sunset came up under the clouds and broke through almost
like alpenglow where there was thin cover.
These photos are pretty much at the edge of the capabilities of my gear, as you can see, but they still give a pretty
strong impression of what it was like.
And then of course, good old Heathrow Airport.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
An Interesting Phenomenon
Looking down out my window (porthole?), I noticed this odd apparition. I probably should have taken a bunch of pictures
of it, but I did not. OK, I have to kindof set this up for you. This was basically a band of nothing where haze was. That
was my visual interpretation of what I was seeing. In some instances, where the atmosphere was thicker, you could see it more
clearly as the absense of moisture. Or at least, that's how I thought of it. Now in this photo, it looks almost like there's
a plane in the front, but it's not. It's a cloud (there are several similar ones nearby).
So my theory at the time was that this was the contrail of a plane flying at a lower altitude than I (perhaps only 10,000
metres, for example). As the plane went through, it disturbed the atmosphere clearing out a little path.
I do also have to say that the other obvious possibility is that this is not an atmospheric condition at all, but rather
a reflection of something up high in the main cabin. The perception of depth that I got out of the window could have been
caused by the appearance of depth relative to me of the feature above me that was being reflected. Meaning, if it was 1.5
metres back over my head, it would look like it was 1.5 metres down in that angle out the window. That combined with the difference
in contrast could have done it. But I do have to say that whilst I was experiencing it, I absolutely did not think it was
a reflection.
But my final theory is that it's actually the shadow of the contrail of the airplane that I'm in. Not bad, eh? The reason
you can't see the airplane is that it's too small. When you look up at a plane in the sky, you can see that the contrail doesn't
begin right at the engine, it doesn't appear until a few degrees behind the engine, and then it gets wider over time up to
a point. That's pretty much what's happening here as well.
More Airplane Photos
OK, I held this one back because it's the best view of Boston I got on this trip, but also because there's a story behind
it. As the plane was taking off, I was happily shooting away. I was shooting fast enough that the camera was buffering shots.
But after taking this photo, the battery died.
Of course, I had another battery, that wasn't the issue. The issue was that I now had to wait for all the photos to get
dumped out to the flash card (my camera leaves enough battery in reserve to do that in its last breath) which takes about
90 seconds. Then I flip in the new battery and start shooting again. By this time, though, the plane has travelled quite a
bit and I've missed the view of Boston from some very nice angles. That's a shame, especially since I had a good chance for
a nice shot of the Zakim Bridge.
Oh by the way, the fall foliage looked pretty good from up here.
This is the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, better known as 'Plum Island'. It's an absolutely beautiful place - salt marshes and beautiful sand beaches. Due to its
protection, it's a relatively unspoiled bit of seacoast. Just a wonderful place. There are a number of endangered species
that use this land as well.
How's this for seeing patterns in clouds? This was a really striking formation. I think they are actually stratus clouds
- the low kind. They seem very low to the ground.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Wind From The North West
I found myself in Boston last week for a brief business trip. I didn’t take
any pictures there. But I got lucky on the way home because the weather was beautiful and the wind was blowing from the northwest.
Logan airport gets weird when the wind blows from certain
directions. In this case, they end up only being able to use one runway for both take-offs and landings. However, if you are
sitting on the left side of the plane (as I was), you get an absolutely spectacular view of Boston
and Cambridge on the way up to altitude. And so I sat there
with my camera shooting the whole flight whilst the guy in front of me took a few with a really nice Leica digital rangefinder.
Because of the wind direction,
things were pretty backed up a Logan. This is kindof a classic
must-have shot of airport congestion, so I was pleased to have gotten it.
Take-off reveals a brilliant photo of Logan showing
the control tower, and a swath of terminals from C to E.
The view of the airport pales in comparison to Boston when it comes into sharp view from this take-off direction.
You also get the perfect Charles River Basin opportunity. Unfortunately, it was a bit hazy viewing from this direction
(back towards the sun) and the photo suffers as a consequence.
More to follow. The flight got very interesting, but you'll just have to wait for that.
Monday, October 16, 2006
A Beautiful Day for Flying
I had an absolutely dream flight for photos last Friday when flying back to London. I have at least a dozen really nice
shots, many from the unusual north-west take-off that provided a postcard view of Boston, Cambridge and so forth.
But it would be a mistake to think that the only interesting pictures you can take from a plane are when there are interesting
vistas like that on the ground, because, well, there usually aren't. But a plane is a great place to take more abstract photos.
Unless you are flying over deep water on a cloudless day, in which case you're better off watching Click.
Smooth and Sharpish
Technical Data: Canon EOS 10D, ƒ5.0, 1/250s
Canon 24-70mm ƒ2.8L @ 24mm (38mm effective)
White balance: auto, RAW, ISO 400
Shot through the window of a 777
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