Windish Day and the Blue Angels

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Capture something in flight. Birds, insects, planes, bats, whatever -- if it's getting around in the skies, it's fair game for this photo shoot.

It was a blustery day today (what my dad used to call "windish"), and on top of that, I live and work in a fairly domesticated part of Tucson. Neither of these conditions was conducive to getting a good picture of birds in flight today. Oh, I saw a fair number of them, mostly sparrows and doves, zipping along in the heavy wind. But they were far, and fast, and tiny, and the pictures weren't very good. Here's the only one from today's batch I'm even going to show you:

Can you spot the birdies? Me neither.

Yes, there are birds in that picture. I even cropped it quite a bit to make them more visible. But there were no hawks about, certainly no eagles or owls or ravens, and it's been years since I've seen a turkey vulture inside the city limits. If I had an hour to drive into the mountains, I could maybe have photographed a raven or a raptor or a vulture, but as it is the biggest thing I saw was a dove, or a far-off airplane. Yes, I admit that I did get a few pictures tonight with a recognizable airplane. But trust me, none of the shots had a decent-sized image of something in flight.

The Blue Angels, I'm pretty sure

But no matter, because back in March I took a bunch of pictures of an air show over our neighborhood, one of the perks of living within a couple miles of Davis-Monthan Air Base. I posted my best, edited photos at the time, but here are some of the nicer leftovers.

Keeping Calle Mumble safe...maybe

As you can see, it was a cloudy day that day, too. I like the way this nearby house ended up looking all dark and spooky when I darkened the sky.

flying high, right into the sun...

flying north in the spring

The clouds seem to be pointing the Blue Angels toward a rendezvous in the Santa Catalina Mountains.

Make a wish! Kind of a wishbone-shaped jet trail.

Ta-da! I'm done, and it's not even 1:30 AM yet! Good night!

Karen