Tag Archives: low

Space Shuttle Endeavour Flyover #3

September 24, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Space Shuttle Flyover – Moffett Field

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.

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Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Northern California

Space Shuttle Endeavour Flyover #2

September 23, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Space Shuttle Endeavour flyover – Moffett Field

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! :-)

Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Northern California

Space Shuttle Endeavour Flyover – Moffett Field

September 22, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Space Shuttle Endeavor flyover - Moffett Field — Space Shuttle Endeavor flyover – Moffett Field

Space Shuttle Endeavour Flyover – Moffett Field.

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!

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Wildlife

Snow Geese and Farm Buildings

March 19, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Snow geese fly low past a Skagit Valley farm, Washington.

Back in February I was fortunate to be able to spend a day photographing migratory (and other) birds in the lower Skagit Valley area in the state of Washington. For me the primary draw was the snow geese, since I had just spent several days photographing Ross’s geese in California’s Central Valley, along with the beautiful trumpeter swans that hang out in the fields in this part of Washington. I had also been alerted to the presence of bald eagles in the area.

I drove up very early in the day from the Seattle area, arriving at just about the time that would have been sunrise… if it had not been a typical gray Washington day. I passed through a small town by the highway and then headed out into this farm country, immediately spotting scattered groups of trumpeter swans, whose large white bodies stand out clearly against the intense green of the new growth in the fields. However, all of these birds were too far from the roads, so I moved on, soon passing what looked like a country produce stand in front of a fallow field that where there were some geese. I stopped – and immediately heard that striking sound of the huge flocks of geese – and got out my camera gear to see what I could do. At this point I looked around a bit more and saw flock after flock of birds high in the sky to the west and heading this direction. Very soon all of these flocks began land on this very field where I had fortuitously stopped and in minutes there were tens of thousands of geese on the ground and many more flying routes above and around the field.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: low

Space Shuttle Endeavour Flyover #3

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Snow Geese and Farm Buildings

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.