Blue Angels in Black and White. San Francisco, California. October 11, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

OK, now for something entirely different.

My original plan was to be in the eastern Sierra today on Saturday, patiently photographing peaceful and quiet aspen groves. But driving conditions did not look promising and I decided not to go. (I did go for the day on Sunday, but more on that later.) In any case, instead of shooting aspens I found myself on the waterfront of San Francisco Bay watching an air show featuring the Blue Angels, here photographed as they blew past directly overhead at a rather low altitude.

See, I can photograph things that move, too! :-)

Later note: Several people asked about the equipment I used to shoot this event. I used a Canon 5D with the Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS lens. I shot mostly at 400mm, but was glad to be able to zoom out on a few occasions when the action was a bit closer. My technique is to put the camera in burst mode, but usually just fire a single shot at a time. Most of the time I’m definitely not a “burst and hope for the best” sort of photographer – I’ll actually follow the action through the viewfinder and resist the temptation until the shot looks interesting. But not always. This shot was done in burst mode as the formation screamed almost directly overhead.

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