Just a few days after I purchased my digital camera, there was an air show at Hill Air Force Base. This show ususally takes place on Memorial Day weekend every other year, and includes performances by the U.S. Air Force demonstration team, the Thunderbirds. Unfortunately, on this day in May 2012, the weather was not cooperating.
By the time I arrived on the flight line it was pouring rain. Fortunately the Air Force opened up a few hangars -- in addition to those featuring displays for the air show -- and the hardiest members of the crowd found a dry place to wait out the storm. Many people decided to call it a day and go home. Even before finding an open hangar, as I swam upstream against the mass exodus, I told myself that I was made of sterner stuff. I was soaking wet by the time I found an open hangar.
There was a moment when it looked like the rain would stop, so I left the hangar to check out a V-22 Osprey. While standing inside the cargo bay of the tiltrotor aircraft, however, the rain started up again. Back to the hangar I went, even us some of the hardier few gave up and left. This time the wait wasn't so long and the word was out that the Thunderbirds were going to fly.
Thanks to the rain, I found a spot front row center on the flight line for the show. In fact, it was the best spot I had ever had for an air show. Preceeding the Thunderbirds were and F-16 which demonstrated the aircrafts maneuverability, an aerobatic bi-plane, a racing pilot from the Red Bull air racing series, a heritage flight featuring an F-16 and a P-51, and an FJ2 Fury, a Navy version of the North American F-86 Sabre. Unfortunately, a MiG 15 that was supposed to have a mock dog fight with the Fury was unable to take off.
Finally, the Thunderbirds began their show. Due to the lingering cloud cover, the flight demonstration team opted to perform its low show. This meant taking out the high stuff like the bomb burst. But the low show is still very good, and you get plenty of afterburner noise. The great thing about the afterburner is that you don't just hear it, you feel it.
The best shot of the day involved a maneuver where one of the solo pilots overtakes the four who are making a slow pass in a loose formation with their landing gear extended. At one point the overtaking solo appears to fly through the diamond four formation. To get this shot I had to anticipate when my camera would finish its autofocus and snap the picture. Maybe I got lucky, but I got the shot.
Here are some more photos from that day:
One of the reaons I wanted to upgrade to digital was that there were certain photos I wanted to take in my hometown. I was walking each day along Main Street and thinking about pictures I could shoot, but the idea of using film, finding a place to get them developed -- and hopefully get the negatives on a CD -- all seemed a bit much. With film I would be limited to the number of exposures per roll, whereas with digital I am basically unlimited -- think of a roll of 36 exposures compared to a memory card that can hold as much as 300 photos.
One of the first photos I wanted to shoot involved the standout subject of Main Street, the Bountiful Tabernacle. I also wanted a photo with the tabernacle and the Bountiful LDS Temple. In the photo above, you can see that I also got part of the post office.
I tried again in December, at night, from a different angle.
What I needed was a telephoto lens. But now I was pretty sure I had the right spot.
After finally getting the shot I wanted, I decided to play around with the pop art and black and white features of my camera.
I said that I might on occasion post about photos I find on the Web. Well, here goes.
The Merinigen Air Base (flugplatz in German), in Switzerland, is
basically a village in a farming community with space set aide for the
accommodation of fighter-bombers and helicopters. The airfield is located near the hamlet of Unterbach and the town of Meiringen, in the canton of Bern. It is one of three main air bases of the Swiss Air Force.
The airfield is situated in the steep-sided alpine valley of the Aar river, with its single runway parallel to the river. It is flanked to the north by the main road to Meiringen, the river, and the Brünig railway line. To the south, taxiways connect the airfield to aircraft caverns built within the valley side.
Two roads cross the
main runway, and close to the flight-line is a hotel and a Nissan
dealer. Security is maintained by military personnel with day-glow
battens who gently direct spectators away from the sensitive areas. The
fences are designed to keep cattle off the runway rather than as
barriers to trouble makers.
When the barriers came down one day, to stop people
crossing the main runway, two pedestrians got caught in the middle, leading to a chase by the Swiss Air Force security, in order to stop them before they could get run over by
an F-5 Tiger which was taking off.
The photos of the F/A-18C and the F-5 Tiger aircraft are courtesy of the Fighter Jets Lovers page at Facebook -- who got them from Airliners.net. The aerial photo of Meiringen is courtesy of Wikipedia.
In 1902, an area of Salt Lake City, Utah, near City Creek Canyon, was set aside for a park and this area would become Memory Grove Park in the 1920s when the Salt Lake chapter of the Service Star Legion, a national patriotic organization for women whose relatives had served in the First World War,
asked the city to use the space to honor America's soldiers. In addition to the planting of trees, memorials were to be added to the park.
The first structure in the park was a circular memorial that strangely became known as the Pagoda. This classic structure is composed of eight Doric columns which support an entablature. An octagonal shaft and urn honoring Salt Lake City's fallen soldiers of World War I was added in 1932. The marble for the memorial came from the same quarry in Vermont which provided the marble for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The Pagoda, as well as the Memory Grove entrance gates, were designed by Salt Lake City architect Slack Winburn.
On June 28, 2012, my wife and I visited Memory Grove Park on the occasion of our 21st wedding anniversary. We were spending the day in Salt Lake and my wife suggested that we visit the park; it was a warm and beautiful day, and the park had many visitors. This visit was my first in many years. The last time I had visited Memory Park it was still a Grove.
In August 1999, a tornado ripped through Salt Lake City and felled many of the trees in Memory Grove. The park was restored by thousands of volunteers and several partners, including Salt Lake City,
the Memory Grove Foundation, Utah Heritage Foundation, FEMA, the Central
Utah Water Conservancy District, Salt Lake County, Tree Utah, and the
Forest Service. Memory Park was made beautifal again, though there are not nearly as many trees as there once were.
The photo above was the best shot of the day. I saw he blue sky and clouds through the circular opening and thought it would make a good picture. Here are some more photos that I took that day of the Pagoda:
Over the last eighteen months I have taken more than 10,000 photographs as I have moved from film photography to digital photography. I got started in photography many years ago when I received my first SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera, a Canon AE-1. This was the camera I used during three years of high school photography and as a yearbook photograper my senior year. After high school I upgraded to a Canon A-1, one of the last batch ever made.
In the spring of 2012, I felt it was past time to upgrade to a digital camera. I wanted a camera that I could use the lenses I used with my Canon cameras. I chose an Olympus Pen E-PL1, with a micro Zukio 14-46mm, 3.5-5.6 lens. Later I purchased a micro Zukio 40-150mm, 4.0-5.6 telephoto lens.
I have been thinking about starting a blog to post my photographs, to talk about the subjects and locations and the photography experience. And here it is!
I might also on occasion post pictures I find via the Web that I think are really good. In those cases I will let you know that it was someone else's work.
I hope you enjoy my offerings here.
