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 third in my four-photograph sequence of the Space Shuttle Endeavour and its transport aircraft doing a slow and low pass over the NASA/Ames Research Center Moffett Field Facility in the southern San Francisco Bay Area is it continued on its trip to its new home in Los Angeles.
In this photograph the shuttle has passed by my position and was departing. The angle here gives one of the clearest views of the shuttle, with only the tip of the 747 wing obscuring the area behind the shuttle cockpit. In my view, the light here is a bit better as well, as the shuttle is not quite as directly front-lit as in the previous image in the sequence. This brings up a surprise to all of us who were there to watch the flyover. Everything was set up to suggest that the shuttle would fly down the runway of Moffett Field: fences were set up facing the runway, chairs were lined up in that direction, and the crowd mostly pushed up against the fences. I had spent some time thinking about how to best photograph the event with it being back-lit. As we first caught sight of the shuttle at some distance out over the bay, it seemed to be making a slow turn that would, in fact, bring it down the runway. But then it became apparent that it was not going to do this, but that it instead seemed to be over flying the actual Ames Research Center, located on the far side of the Hangar One facility and behind us as we were set up. At this point I was glad that I had decided to not lug along a tripod since I could easily turn and track it as it followed this unexpected route.
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
This was an exciting moment! The space shuttle Endeavour was on its final “flyover” around California on Friday this week as it made its way toward its new home in a museum in Los Angeles. Since it was scheduled to fly over the NASA/Ames Research Center air field – the old Moffett Field – I decided to be there with camera in hand. Having been warned of big crowds and bad traffic, I was up at 5:20 a.m. in order to catch public transit shortly after 6:00 a.m., and I arrived at the gates to the facility at about 7:30 a.m. The crowds were not too large at that point, though they swelled as that actual event got closer.
Moffett Field is a place with some meaning to people who have lived on the San Francisco Peninsula for some time – especially to those, like me, who were brought up here. I can recall going there with my family on the old “Armed Forces Day” to see the big annual air show, which often featured the Blue Angels. The large dirigible hangars at the base still stand (though one is undergoing renovation), and they have long been landmarks for people traveling along US 101 between Silicon Valley and San Francisco. As I walked out onto the edge of the runway, memories of many past visits to the place came back to me.
Since I arrived at 7:30, I had quite a while to wait before the shuttle and its 747 transport aircraft arrived. I spent a bit of time photographing the crowd, the old “Hangar One,” other airfield facilities, and even the interesting clouds. The flyover was scheduled for 9:30, but reports made it clear that there would be a delay, and we gradually figured out that it might be 10:30 or a bit later. Shortly after 10:30 the cry “there it is!” went up, and far to the left (as we faced the runway) we could see the small shape of the far-off shuttle and its carrier. Perhaps it is due to the size of the combined aircraft, but they seemed to move very slowly. We had been given the expectation that they would fly in front of us along the runway, but as the shuttle approached it became clear that it would actually pass behind us and on the other side of the old hangar. I made a few shots before it passed behind the upper section of the structure, flying surprisingly low, and then continued shooting as it emerged along the top of the hangar, then passed it, and continued on toward the mountains to the south. The whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion, and there was plenty of time to make photographs of the astonishing sight. After many years of seeing shuttles on television and in print, it was stunning to see that actual thing fly by so close. (I had seen one lift-off in Florida some years ago, though from such a great distance that I couldn’t see anything like the detail I could make out here.)
On a photographic note, I shot this whole thing handheld using a full-frame camera with a 100-400mm zoom. Once again the zoom proved itself. Not only did it produce images with enough resolution that I can see the 747 pilot looking out the window at the crowd in the full size version, but it let me adjust focal length as the show flew past – at its closest it was so large that the whole thing did not fit in the frame at 400mm!
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
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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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.
