Round Robin: Hot As Sun

For the Round Robin Challenge: Hot Stuff, I asked to see something hot - by any definition of the word. I think I had vague plans to photograph something involving chili peppers, but as busy as I've been these last two weeks, and given that I don't eat hot peppers and John didn't happen to bring any into the house recently, it didn't happen. So I'm going to have to reach into my archives for appropriate images!

Fortunately, I don't seem to have posted some rather spectacular photos I took four years ago of one of the hottest things going - the sun! I was trying to photograph airplanes flying over our neighborhood during an air show, but the sun turned out to be the real star of the day.

 

Much longer ago, back in May 2007, I got anther nice shot of the sun that I appear not to have posted:

That'll do, Sun.

Now let's see what Hot Stuff the other Robins found!

Linking List
as of Saturday, March 8, 2014
12:15 AM MST

Jama  - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com
http://mummyjam.blogspot.sg/2014/03/round-robin-hot-stuff.html

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Ellen  - Posted!
Ellen's Phlog
http://ellensphlog.blogspot.com/

Amanda *Welcome!** - Posted!
Forestwoodfolkart
https://forestwoodfolkart.wordpress.com
http://forestwoodfolkart.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/round-robin-challenge-hot-stuff-broccoli-soup/

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Karen

Up, Up and Away!

My flight instructor.

Now it can be told: when I started this new job, 40 miles northwest of my home, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to study for my pilot's license. As of today, I've been given the go-ahead to enter an elite training program that prepares pilots to operate vintage aircraft at air shows and other venues.

After a period of apprenticeship at the Pima Air and Space Museum (one of my favorite places in Tucson!), I hope to qualify as a pilot on a B-17, the same kind of bomber on which my dad was a navigator in World War II for seven missions before going down over Czechoslovakia in a sabotaged plane.  Exciting, huh?

So far, I've only flown a Hawker and a Falcon, but my instructor is very encouraged. I must say I'm rather proud of myself.


Even if I don't end up in the B-17, Tucsonans may well see a vintage plane in the sky at the air show next March, with me in the cockpit!

Karen

ETA: What the pictures are, really:

1. The pilot of one of the two airplanes owned by First Magnus, July 2007. Almost exactly a month before the company collapsed, the accounting department made a field trip out to the hanger where the two planes, a Hawker and a Falcon, were housed.
2. My dad at the Pima Air and Space Museum, January 2011.
3. One of the First Magnus planes, July 2007. It's probably the Dassault Falcon.
4. A grouping of planes from the annual "Heritage Flight" in Tucson, flying over my house several years ago.

Round Robin: Look! Up in the Sky!

I had big plans for Round Robin Challenge: Look Up/Look Down, as suggested by Steven of (sometimes)photoblog -- vague plans, but big ones nonetheless. I was going to go to the park with the dogs and stare up tree trunks. I was going to go back to 5151 E Broadway and photograph it from the base of the tower, and then ride the elevator to the top and look down from there. I was going to drive to Babad Do'ag Vista on Mount Lemmon and look down upon the city. And when all that fell through because I had to work, I was going to photograph my dogs from above and below. The dogs didn't like that idea much.

From Air Show

But then I remembered! Last weekend was the air show! Every March since I got here in 1986, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base has hosted an air show. Calle Mumble is only a few miles from D-M, so we're on the flight path for many of the planes and jets as they soar and swoop and make their turns, setting up for whatever dramatic stuff they're doing over the base itself. And most years, I make some attempt to photograph the tiny, speedy, airplane-shaped dots as they cross the sky.



Most of the photos I'm posting tonight are not reduced in size at all, if you look at them directly on Picasaweb. (Click on any shot to see these full size versions). Compared to the overall size of each unedited photo, the planes are barely more than a speck of darkness against the blue. So what I've done is crop each photo really severely. You lose a bit of the perspective, the essential up-ness, but really, where else will you find a jet in motion, except by looking up?




I have to say that by and large, I was pleased with what my camera managed to capture. With the possible exception of a single Blue Angels shot from a few years ago, I think this is the first time I've seen the cockpit of a moving jet in one of my photos.



Finding the jets as I looked up into the sky was generally a real challenge. The engine roar echoed off the buildings long before anything was visible, and it was often hard to tell in what direction to look. Then when they did appear, they were generally fast and far away. Can you even see the plane in this picture?



Plus the sun was in my eyes, every time, so I could not frame a shot by looking at the viewscreen. I just had to point and hope! Generally I ended up with the jets in the lower right corner of the image. But here's one that was closer than most of the flybys that afternoon. I just managed to get part of it in the frame before it was gone.



Don't ask me to identify any of them, but these planes came in several shapes and sizes, sometimes more than one kind in the same grouping.



At some point I fiddled with the settings on the camera, after which I found it almost impossible to photograph the jets at all. The camera wanted to take its time focusing - which meant that it refused to take a photo until that fast, blurry thing was out of the frame. I got a lot of pictures of empty sky after that. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly what the settings were before I experimented with them. This was one of the last shots I got that actually had planes in them.

Now let's go see whether other Robins have been looking up, or down, or both!

Linking List (As of 11:46 AM MST)

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com

ellen b. - Posted!
The Happy Wonderer
http://happywonderer.wordpress.com

Linda - Posted!
Mommy's Treasures
http://mommystreasures.blogspot.com

Quiltworks - Posted! 02/28/10
World Through The Eyes of a Fiber Artist
http://quilt-works.blogspot.com/2010/02/american-coot-bird-photo-by-quiltworks.html

Sherrie
Sherrie's Stuff
http://sherrie-plummer.blogspot.com

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Suzanne R - Posted!
SuzyQ421's Photo Blog
http://suzyq421sphotoblog.blogspot.com

Monica - Posted!
Shutterly Happy
http://monica-frameofmind.blogspot.com

CarolynUSA - Posted!
Ford Family Photos
http://carolyn1209.blogspot.com

Sandy - Posted!
From The Heart Of Texas
http://sandyfromtheheartoftexas.com

Cathy
LadyHightower's Meme Castle
http://ladyhightowerscastle.blogspot.com

maryt/theteach - Posted!
Mary Tomaselli's Photos
http://marytomaselli.blogspot.com

Ruth - Posted!
Scrabble Queen
http://scrabblequeen.wordpress.com

Rita - Posted!
Cashjocky and The Old Salt
http://cashjocky.blogspot.com

Duane - Posted!
Meanwhile...
http://fdtate.blogspot.com

And don't forget our other memes:

 The Weekend Assignment

This week: Weekend Assignment #310: Create An Urban Legend!

and

The Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot

This week: Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #80: Animals (a new one will be posted on Monday!)


Check 'em out!

Karen

EMPS: Black and White Magic

It's time again for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot, specifically EMPS #28: BLACK & WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY. Carly mentions in the entry that a black and white photo can be mysterious, which got me thinking about trying to convey the concept of magic. But first....

From EMPS

This is technically not a black and white photo, but it might as well be, because no color is in evidence as the backlit jet crosses an overcast sky. This past weekend was the annual air show at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near our house. I'm pretty sure there was an air show the first week we came to town, back in March 1986, and now here it is again. Every year I try to photograph some of the planes that scream overhead, but except for my 2007 shots, where I both worked hard at it and got lucky a few times, I've had little success.

This year I didn't even see the Blue Angels, just the smaller stuff, going by very fast, very high up, and rather distant. At one point the sky cleared up enough to get this shot of cirrus clouds, which become really interesting when converted to black and white. There was supped to be a jet in this photo, but I may have edited it out with the lens flares.

Let's move on to the real black and white shots, which I was able to photograph under more controlled conditions. These were set up for black and white in camera. I collected things that could serve as props in a fantasy novel - an earthenware mug, a teapot, a small bottle that could hold potion, something like an amulet, a quartz crystal ball, three interesting-looking books, and George Junior, one of my gargoyles.

Cropped to feature the ball.

"Old photo" FX applied.

That's it from me for tonight - but as usual, I encourage you to check with Carly's blog Ellipsis to see other entries.

Update: Oops! Carly asked a question, and I missed it!


This Week's Question: If you could photograph any celebrity, who would it be?

I have photographed Scott Bakula, various Doctor Who people and a few other actors. At this point, the celebrity I'd love to be photographing is David Tennant, who plays the Tenth Doctor on Doctor Who. He is currently filming the last few tv specials that wrap up his tenure on the show, and lucky and dedicated fans are out there late at night whenever the filming takes place outside, taking rather amazing photos given that they stay back to avoid interfering with the cast and crew. I wish I could be out there with them, digital SLR and zoom lens in hand, capturing the end of an era. But I'm not likely to get to Wales before Tennant is done with the role. And that's where the show is shot!

Karen

Monday Photo Shoot #11: Far and Near

This one, another study in contrasts, gives me an excuse to show you some pictures I took today:

New Monday Photo Shoot #11: Take a picture of something far away - but include something much closer in the same shot.

Every March since we first got to Tucson in 1986, there has been an air show over at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. At least, that's how it seems to me. I've never actually attended the thing, but I remember seeing lots of Blue Angels and Flying Tigers and miscellaneous fighter jets in formation at this time of year. Our current home is beneath the flightpath of the air show. Some years I stand in my driveway for a bit, and try to catch the jets as they zoom around. Today was one of those days.

Most of the time the jets are way far away. If they're even visible, they're little more than wedge-shaped specks in the sky. You hear them before you see them, and try to deduce from the sound where they will appear.

Eventually if you're patient (and live in my neighborhood!), they come close enough that if you zoom in, you might catch them large enough to be seen. Then it's a matter of cropping the photo down to the tiny portion where the planes are. In most of my shots it was easy to keep bits of neighborhood trees in frame.

I never did get these two planes close enough for a clearer shot than this. They almost look like toy airplanes.


Off they go, flying high, right into the sun. In this case the planes are the closer element, the shafts of sunlight more distant.

And here they are flying over Jupiter. Okay, not really, but this is what "Auto Enhance" saw in the sun-streaked sky.

This shot doesn't actually fit my criteria. But I'm including it anyway 'cause it's cool.

Your turn: photograph some distant object, with something closer in the foreground. You can go for extreme distances with stars and planets and such, or show us what's on the horizon. You can even keep the distances relatively short, and photograph something across the room from you. Take your best shot(s), upload to your blog or journal with a link back here, and leave your link in the comments to this entry so we can all take a look! I'll post the roundup of entries next Sunday night. Have fun!

Karen

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

Progris Riport #2; Wild Blue Yonder

Know what these are?


These are the boxes I've hauled out of my office in the last couple of days. A few of them, especially the odd-sized ones, were aleady boxed, more or less. The rest were not. I've emptied my trash at least five times, filled two shoeboxes with more trash, and discarded old packing and other large items in two other, larger trash bins. And you know what? It's finally starting to look better. I know you don't have a "before" picture for comparison, but take a look at the "after" as of tonight:


The rest of the stuff in the closet here, including the bookcases, will also go away, so that John can put in new flooring and build more efficient shelving. Meanwhile, you can see what I mean about the ratty orange carpeting. Yuck!

***

A word of photographic advice to those of you who may live under the flight path of an annual air show, and think it would be a good idea to get pictures of the Blue Angels and other jets. Prepare to be frustrated. These guys are fast! By the time they get close enough to be much more than a dot on the viewfinder, it's almost too late to take the shot, leaving you with something like this:


It didn't help that I failed to identify the sound of their approach as coming from behind me. They went directly over my head, but by the time I snapped the picture, they were tiny leaf shapes at the very edge of the frame. Fortunately for me, they gave me a second chance a couple minutes later. This time I almost got the shot:

One of the problems was that they were mostly flying in front of the sun, which threw its glare on fairly heavy cloud cover. I've darkened these last two photos considerably so that you can see everything: the jets, the sun and the patterns of the clouds and jet trails. They really were "flying high right into the sun!"


Good night!

Karen