Aircraft, Air Museums and Air Shows Gallery

http://monterey-john-photographer.com/Aircraft-frame.html

Blue Angels and Lightroom2

I love playing with Lightroom. I did a couple of things here. First i went in with an "adjustment brush" and brought up the yellow lettering and trim. Then I put in a slight vignette to focus the eye on the center aircraft. Lightroom is a wonderful tool. It has many applications which can only improve the quality of the images we produce for our clients.

Salinas California International Airshow - 5 Blue Angels

Did I mention that I love airshows and especially The Blue Angels? :)

I'm rather tickled how the Canon 70-300 IS behaved this day. Pretty good clarity. I manually focused, set the ISO at 200, set the shutter at 1/500th and just shot away. Worked out OK.

Why manually focus? Sky confuses the heck out of Canon system for some reason. I learned that lesson a long time ago. Judging by the sharpness, this was the right decision.

LR2 was used to make the planes pop a bit.

Salinas California International Airshow - Blue Angels and More

Another great show by The Blue Angels. They never disappoint.

I had a wonderful opportunity to see them take off from the end of the runway. It is a totally different experience from watching them from the grandstands. For anyone who does this in the future, bring good ear plugs and be prepared to be blown away as they take off in afterburner.

Here are a few images I captured:

Salinas California International Airshow - Blue Angels - A Slideshow

Too many images to post all, so here is a slideshow to provide viewers with a bit of the flavor of this great show by the Blue Angels.

http://montereyjohnphotography.com/Galleries/Blue_Angels/index.html

Salinas California International Airshow - Almost That Time Again!

My favorite event of the year is coming up August 7-9. This year it is Navy's Blue Angels for the main attraction plus a huge variety of other aircraft.

Here is a bit of an example of what you might see, a World War II P-51 fighter.

Salinas California International Airshow - A Disappointment

I am not sure if anyone else is saying this, but I was disappointed in this year's airshow.

Sure, I went Sunday and the Thunderbirds were grounded by fog. I had been looking forward to them for months. I felt like a kid who ended up in the hospital on his birthday. It hurt too much to laugh and I was too old to cry. Oh well ...

But there was more to the disappointment than that.

In years past there have always been many "static displays" to enjoy. These are parked aircraft that have been flown in that you can get up close and personal with. There have been numerous P51 Mustangs, B25 Mitchell bombers and a wide variety of other WWII warbirds. This year there were no P51s and therefore no music of the Rolls Royce Merlin engines. There were no bombers. The vintage DC3 was not there. In point of fact, there was precious little to look at. The lack of things to look at cast a depressing pall over the whole event Thunderbirds not withstanding.

Most of the speculation I heard about this sorry state of affairs involved the economy. These planes are in private hands. They are enormously expensive to maintain, and as for the 100+ octane aviation fuels they require, well ... it is galactically costly, and it is something of a miracle it can even be found in this day of jet fuel.

Will the air show ever be what it was in the last few years?

One can only hope.

Woooooo-hooooo! - Salinas California International Airshow

Yes, another shot from last year's airshow at Salinas. It is coming around again September 27-28! I can not wait.

I have a special page with photo gallery and video of The Thunderbirds on my web site here.


Visit the Airshow web site for details http://salinasairshow.com/

California International Airshow Salinas September 27-28 F-18 Departing

One of my favorite parts of the airshow actually comes after the show. On Sunday afternoon the aircraft all leave for home or their next destination. In the late afternoon light you can watch a stream of aircraft leaving one after another. It is quite a site.

Here is an F-18 departing from last year's show.

Much more can be found on my web site, MontereyJohn Photography.com

California International Airshow Salinas September 27-28

It is coming up on that time of year again, The California International Airshow at Salinas. This is two days of photographic ecstacy. This year it will be the USAF Thunderbirds that are featured. The will be many other aircraft as well, military, civilian, modern and historic. also appearing will be the Canadian national parachute team and stunt performers and teams.

It is every boy's dream, the chest rattling roar of jet fighters making a low pass, the music of the Merlin engine of the WWII P-51, the thrill of the stunt flyers and so much more ... an awesome experience. Then there is the flyout of the aircraft on the last afternoon.

It is just a grand event not to be missed.

The video seen on the web page can be viewed at MontereyJohn Photography web site.

The Basin Fire - Heroes of Big Sur

Yesterday I drove down to Big Sur to take a look at the Basin Fire. It is enormous and out of control. It has been burning for over a week since the area experienced dry lightning strikes. It is the second huge fire in the area that between them have burned something over 80,000 acres.

Fighting those fires are many heroic firefighters. Conspicuous among these brave people are the pilots of the helicopters that scoop up water and dump it on the blaze in an effort to keep the fire from spreading into habitated areas. They dive into the steep canyons where there is precious little maneuvering room and flame generated updrafts to deliver their cargo. It takes skill and guts.

This chopper has delivered its load of water and is on its way back to the coast to reload.