A smiling pilot is visible through the cockpit window of the space shuttle Endeavour during its flyover of the NASA Ames Moffett Field.
Just for fun… this is a 100% magnification crop of a section of one of my photographs of the flyover by space shuttle Endeavour, mounted on its 747 transport aircraft. I made the photograph on September 21, 2012 as it flew over the NASA Ames Moffett Field in the San Francisco Bay Area. While working on the original photograph I was looking closely at it when I realized that the face of the pilot (co-pilot?) is visible in the cockpit window… and I swear he is grinning! :-)
(Since I know some will ask… Canon 5D2 with Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS, handheld.)
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
Trees grow at the edges of Tuolumne Meadows as Lembert Dome and Mount Dana rise beyond, Yosemite National Park.
This photograph includes a bunch of Tuolumne Meadows icons familiar to most anyone who has spent time there – and I’ve spent a lot of time in and around this area over the years! The first obvious icon is the meadow itself, here near the “lower” section before it turns away from the highway and the Tuolumne River heads off towards Glen Aulin and eventually to the abomination of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. The two prominences rising beyond the meadow are both icon. The closer of the two is Lembert Dome, well known to almost all visitors, especially the many who have hiked to its summit to experience the panoramic view of the area. Beyond Lembert Dome is Mount Dana, the second-highest peak in Yosemite. It is located on the eastern boundary of the park right above the entrance at Tioga Pass. For me, there are other icons in this scene as well, though they may be more personal. The lodgepole pine trees silhouetted along the right edge of the frame are found all over the region. The backlit haze, formed as the morning sun just clears the Sierra crest, is a condition that I strongly identify with Tuolumne – and it is a frequent photographic subject.
This simple shot posed some real technical challenges. Perhaps most obviously, the scene includes an extremely large dynamic range between the very bright areas of sunlit haze along the right shoulder of Mount Dana and the dark silhouettes of the backlit trees. In some situations I might make two exposures and blend them in post, but that does not work so well when thing tree trunks and branches stand against the sky. This is a single exposure that just barely contained the brightest tones, and from which I was able to recover just enough detail in the shadows. The composition might seem a bit odd to some, with the dark mass of the silhouetted trees very close to the right edge of the frame. The idea was to create a sense that the trees, or at least an observer among the trees, is looking out from them into the light-filled open space of the meadow.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
The space shuttle Endeavour departs after flying over the NASA/Ames Research Center Moffett Airfield.
Although I continued to shoot as the shuttle flew to the south and out of the San Francisco Bay Area, this is the last shot in the sequence that I’ll share. Although many in the ground hoped (dreamed?) that the shuttle might circle around and make a second pass – there had been rumors of a 200 ft. altitude flight down the runway – it seemed pretty likely that this was the end of the show, though what a show it had been!
In some ways I like this photograph the most, even though it certainly does not reveal as much of the detail of the space vehicle or its transport plane. On the other hand, it seems to me to be a bit more evocative of the end of this era in American space flight – the shuttle flies away in into an almost empty sky.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
This is the second photograph in my sequence showing the Space Shutter Endeavour, mounted atop its transport aircraft, as it did a slow and low flyover of the NASA/Ames Moffett Field facility in the San Francisco Bay Area on September 21, 2012. I posted the first shot yesterday, made as the craft(s) came over the top of the historic Hangar One facility, still approaching my camera position.
This photograph was made a few seconds later, after it had cleared the old hangar and was almost perpendicular to my position and just about as close as it came to me. The slow passage of the lumbering modified 747 carrying the Endeavour was a stunning and beautiful and magical sight. After three hours of waiting in a crowd along the edge of the runway, the first sight of Endeavor approaching from the distance over San Francisco Bay was exciting. Then the approach seemed to accelerate (though I know it didn’t) as the craft passed over the top of the old hangar and emerged in full view very close by. In a moment it was on its departing path, and within another minute or so it was all over.
Because this image from the sequence shows the shuttle the most clearly, I decided to crop a bit differently to eliminate much extraneous material – which here would have been mostly sky. At some point I’d like to make a large print of this or one of the other images. In this one the details of the shuttle (and the transport craft) are extremely clear in the full size image. In fact, I can see the face of one of the people in the cockpit of the 747. He is looking our way, and I swear there is a smile on his face! :-)
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
