When I leave the station at Waterloo and walk across Waterloo Bridge, I go past this old hospital building. It has now been converted to other uses, but the façade shows it origins, and I think the detailing is really cool. During the winter, the building seems to be in the shade whenever I am walking either to or from work. However, the summer means that the evening light catches the front of the building and the details are far more photogenic. Here is a look at this lovely design.
Sometimes, when I get the window seat at the airport, there is really nothing much to see. I am on the wrong side, and everything is out of the other windows. However, on this recent flight, I did have a good view of the parallel taxiway as well as the runway for departing jets. Sure, it was backlit and sometimes taxiing jets could block the view of the runway. Also, windows looking into the sun are not great for clarity. Even so, an A380 from Singapore or a Virgin Atlantic A350-1000 is worth a look and whatever shots the phone can manage.
I have posted many times about motion blur in images to provide the sensation of speed in shots. Sometimes you are sitting around waiting for something (in this case a plane home) and you decide to mess around with whatever you have to hand. Glasgow Airport has fuel trucks that periodically traverse the ramp and, when killing time, why not drop the shutter speed and try and get motion blur. Silly things you do when hanging around!
I posted a bunch of crossing shots of the USAF Thunderbirds and, since I was doing that, I thought it might look like favouritism if I didn’t do the same for the Blue Angels. I saw a lot more of the Blue Angels in the second half of my time living in the US because Fleet Week in San Francisco and Seafair in Seattle always had them in attendance. That meant I got to see them after the transition to the Super Bug but the majority of shows I saw over the years were with the legacy Hornets. Anyway, here are a bunch of crossing shots for the Blues to balance things up.
The partial solar eclipse was going to put our home under the path of significant sun cover. I was aware it wouldn’t be as dramatic as a total eclipse having experienced both, but I still was keen to see it. I had some ideas of shots that I wanted to take and where to take them from. I was hoping to get away from work a bit early to get home and set up for when it all started. Sadly, my plans went awry.
My afternoon meetings ran long, I got a train an hour later than planned, it left late, it got delayed for a medical emergency at an intermediate station so, but the time I got home, it was about ten minutes until maximum obscuration. All plans were scuppered so, instead, I just grabbed the longest lens and my solar filters and headed outside the house to some open ground. There were a bunch of neighbours there and this was the thing that saved it for me.
I was able to let them use my filters to see what was going on and they really appreciated it. I also just got to talk to them which was really good fun. I did take some images, though. Even these didn’t go so well. Initially I was seeing some internal reflections. I moved the filter closer to the end of the lens and that seemed to address that. However, this was partly caused by my second issue which was overexposure. Everything was washed out and, when I remembered to bring the exposure down, things got a lot better. We were already on the way out of the eclipse at this point. Having said that, a shot of a partial eclipse is a shot of a partial eclipse. It really doesn’t matter how much. Therefore, this shot is a bit meh!
When the work schedule allows, I am making the most of the early light to get some bike riding done. When the weather is at its hottest, this is also the best time of day to ride anyway. It is a very peaceful time to be out in country lanes with very little traffic and plenty of wildlife. I was riding along one morning when I saw a hot air balloon off in the distance. Balloon rides are popular in our area, so this isn’t that surprising.
I then lost site of the balloon as I headed north for a while. As I got towards the northern part of my route, I briefly spotted the balloon again through the trees but then it was gone again. I wondered whether it would appear again as I started south but I couldn’t see it because the roads have tree cover on the side that might have offered a view. I gradually lost interest as I figured it had either landed or our routes had diverged again.
As I came through Micheldever, a Land Rover van came in the opposite direction towing a trailer. This was clearly the recovery team heading north. I thought I had my confirmation that they had landed somewhere I had already passed. Turning out of Micheldever, I was riding across the rolling hills towards Stoke Charity when I saw the balloon north of me and quite low to the ground. I stopped and watched it for a while. It was not coming right towards me but was heading slightly more to the east.
I was going to get moving again but then had a change of heart. I wasn’t under any time pressure to finish the ride since it was still really early. I turned around and rode back to Micheldever. I don’t know the village well having always ridden through it on one road. I went the other way with the hope that some sort of open space would show up. Sure enough, I came to a football field and the balloon was coming straight towards me. I stopped and waited to see where it would go next.
Turns out that they were planning on landing in the field I had just made it to. They delicately descended to the ground with a couple of minor skips as they touched down and then settled. When I have seen balloons in the past the crews got very tetchy if you got to close. In this case they kept the balloon inflated and just sat there. I rode onto the field and around while keeping a safe distance. However, they were more than happy to chat as I got closer. I spoke to them briefly and then decided I really ought to continue my ride.
This is one of those more abstract items that occasionally catch your eye. I was standing waiting for a train and looked down at the rails for no reason whatsoever. I noticed the end of the third rail. For those that aren’t familiar with rail systems, the third rail is a power rail for electrical trains. There are two main power delivery methods in the UK. The overhead lines provide 25kV of AC power picked up by a pantograph while the third rail provides a nominal 750V of DC collected by a shoe. When the rail switches side, the end will be tapered down. If a train is pulling a lot of power when it joins or leaves the rail, there can be some interesting arcing. I think the patterns on the surface of the rail here were the result of repeated transitions. I know a couple of people that understand this stuff in way more detail than I so maybe they will correct me.
One of the teams taking part at the show at Cosford was the Blue Eagles. The Army Air Corps used to have a team called the Blue Eagles and I saw them on a number of occasions but, apparently, the name went away for a while. It has returned and the routine is a combination of a pair of Apaches and a single Wildcat. This was my first time seeing an Army Wildcat display and that might not happen much more since the recent defence review announced the=at they would be phased out.
The coordinated manoeuvres of the two Apaches combined with the Wildcat doing its own thing. It kept something in front of the crowd at all times. The Apache is such an impressive machine with a menacing air about it. Meanwhile, the Wildcat has inherited the agility of the Lynx and so was thrown around with some vigour. I was happy to watch them perform and liked the synchronisation that they put into the planning. It is a good demo of the Army’s aviation capabilities.
Go back a few weeks and I had some posts about flying above Chicago with Helinet during the filming of a Transformers movie. In one of those posts, I said I would have some more aerial images of Chicago from that flight, and I suppose I ought to follow through on that promise. Flying over the city you live in is exciting anyway because you get to see things from a very different perspective. Normally, if you are in an airliner, you are so far above things that everything is a bit distant.
A helicopter ride through the buildings is a very different experience. Since you are so much closer, the buildings have a lot more familiarity to them whilst still being viewed from a position you would never normally get. With so many high-rise buildings in the city, you do get to see portions of the city from an elevated position which increases the feeling of knowing them from the air. Still, this is something else as you aren’t looking from a static vantage point but are, instead, working around them from all angles. It is a privileged position to experience. An aerial tour is definitely something to try if you can but that won’t get you as close as filming work does. I am so grateful to have had the chance to see my home for ten years from this position.
Another morning flight for a work trip meant another stop at the Pod Parking. Since the traffic had been light, I was there a little ahead of schedule so it would be rude not to get some shots of the arriving traffic on the northerly runway at Heathrow. Had I been there at sunrise, the sun would have actually been right around on my side, but I was a little later in the morning, so it had come around on the nose.
A Virgin Atlantic A350-1000 was nice to have but I got some short haul types from across Europe. The really interesting surprise was a Loganair ATR42. There are lots of poles in the pod parking and they make getting an unobscured shot tricky. I will confess that some AI removal tools in Lightroom have been exploited to remove some of the distractions. I have not taken out anything that was actually over part of the airframe, even though that can actually work quite well. These are just tidied up to allow the airframe be the focus.
