If the fighter jets were your speed yesterday, you might also like this WWII fighter plane. You might not recognize it from this angle though. This is the bottom side of a P51 Mustang. I caught it in mid-roll during the airshow last Friday. I'll get some more pictures up later so you can see the top side, too, but I always like to bring you pictures from angles you've never seen before.
If the F-14 below isn't powerful enough for you, how about this brand-new F-22 Raptor? It's big, it's bad, it's nationwide! This was the first or second appearance (depending on who you believe) of the Raptor at a civilian airshow, so it's still a rare sight. You saw one earlier in the week here on the blog when I teased you with a shot of the back end of this plane while it was still on the runway.
I think the coolest part of air shows is when they bring out the most powerful planes on the planet, then put them through their paces. This F-14 had just taken off (you can see the landing gear is still in the process of being retracted) and the pilot was pouring the juice to the goose. You can't watch a demonstration like this and not be impressed. It makes you proud to be an American.
Here's a fun little picture from the airshow showing my own reflection in a polished engine shroud. I'm so goofy...
Something about the grill on this plane reminded me of a giant chrome smile. I guess cars weren't the only vehicles to go a little over the top in the fifties. Even the instrument panel on this plane looks like an auto dash from the period.
I think the next time I go to one of these airshows, I'm going to spring for a ride in a plane. Or in the case of these tourists with deep pockets, a helicopter ride.
Here's another shot from the airshow this weekend. I have no idea what sort of plane this is, or who's flying it, or why it's important, but here you go. Look close and you can see the pilot in the cockpit, pressed into his seat by the g-forces.
It's a new week around here, and that means a new calendar page! Today you get a nice view of the skyline of Sarasota, Florida. This one is from a different spot than the night view I shared last week. I shot this from the bridge to Siesta Key. All I can say about this view is that those are an awful lot of condos.
Here's another shot from last weekend that I neglected to blog. These three anhinga chicks are nothing but ugly! I hope I didn't ruin your breakfast by posting this.
I meant to post this last weekend, but I forgot amid all the hullabaloo of the eagles and the osprey. I spotted this red-winged blackbird on the little island at the Venice Rookery. I see them there all the time, but never out in the open, and never showing off their red-capped wings. In a couple of weeks I'll get my longer lens, and I hope to get more shots of smaller birds like this. Wish me luck!
It was briefly a scene from MASH today at the airshow when these Bell helicopters were circling at sunrise. But I don't remember the helicopters from the TV show ever having dancing hula girls sitting atop the instrument panels.
I spent the full day at the airshow today, almost 11 hours on site. I think I walked almost 10 miles around and around and around. I found whole areas I missed yesterday. One of the things I found was this Stearman Biplane that belongs to a friend of a friend. I didn't see it in the air, but I bet this plane looks real nice up in the friendly skies. Apparently, they came with Pratt & Whitney engines, or at least this one did.
If there were only one inverted plane in this shot, you'd accuse me of turning the picture upside down, but since there are two planes, and only one is inverted, you believe me when I tell you it's a genuine shot. OK, I suppose I could have used PhotoShop and done the same thing, but it's hardly worth the effort when you can see the real deal at these airshows.
Ahem! There is no period after the "S" in Harry S Truman. His middle name was S, it wasn't short for anything. You'd think they would know better!
You didn't think I'd forgotten about my feathered friends just because I was at a mechanical flying machine convention, did you? Of course not. I was probably the only guy at the whole show looking at the flying things in the grass instead of on the runways. I have no idea what this guy is called, but he seemed to make his home in the grass between the runways. He had his mouth open like that most of the time I was watching him. Pretty little fellow, though. I'll have to keep my eyes open for more of these and figure out what species exactly they are.
Update: It's an Eastern Meadowlark. It took me a while to find that out, since I kept searching for a name with the word yellow in it. Shows what I know...
Well, I thought I had brought you all of the googie architecture in Lakeland, but I guess I was wrong. I had forgotten about this structure at the Lakeland Linder Regional Airport, home of the airshow I was visiting today. It houses some sort of equipment for the airport, but that design is just far out there. It looks like a giant bowling pin surrounded by it's own satellites or something. Googie!
Any of you aviation buffs out there want to guess what plane this rear end belongs to? Come on, take a guess...
Just for the record, the two shots you see here are time stamped one second apart. The second one is a little blurry, but you get the idea. This guy was rolling fast!
Today was my first chance to visit the Sun N Fun Fly-In. I've been trying to go all week, but I've been ill. And on top of that, it's always been held in Lakeland, Florida, where I was born and raised, and yet I've never been. So today I tried to make up for lost time. And I will continue to do so tomorrow and possibly Sunday as well. So stay tuned for some pictures. This is the first airshow I've been to since MacDill Airfest last year (which they are postponing indefinately for some reason), and it's supposed to be the second largest in the country. I got there today just in time for the airshow, and it was opened by the parachutist above who was trailing a large flag. I couldn't see if they had a flag catcher out on the landing strip to keep the flag from hitting the ground though. I hope so...
This is the shot I wish I had been able to get of the eagles I saw the other day, but I didn't. This is the same osprey you saw the other day with the fish in his talons. In fact, this picture was taken mere seconds before he dove into the pond and made the catch. You may note how his head is cocked to the side a little. When he was zeroing in on his prey, he moved his head from side to side, no doubt performing difficult trigonometric calculations in his head to be able to know exactly where his prey was.
Here's a little demo for you to show how far away I was from the eagles the other day. The overall picture was shot with the camera zoom set at it's shortest length of 75mm. The small rectangle near the center that's slightly brighter blue is with the lens set at 300mm. This is what most camera makers refer to as optical zoom.
Above you can see the full picture at 300mm. As you can see, the eagles are stil pretty much dots near the center.
And here is a detail of the picture where you can actually make out the birds. This is an 8 megapixel camera, so there is a lot of detail in there. This would be digital zoom. All I'm doing is cropping out extraneous information. The picture is smaller, but it's easier to see what you're looking at.
I could go really crazy and zoom in on just one of the birds if I want, but the picture quality is getting really poor.
You can take the digital zoom to it's logical limit, if you'd like, but pretty soon all you can see are the zeroes and ones that lie behind the digital data.
Here's another picture from last Sunday's trip to the Venice Rookery. This little family is a group of moorhens. This was the first time I've ever seen any babies, and as you can see, they look pretty much the same as mommy and daddy.
I promise I will get more from this little adventure up later, but this is the best of the bunch, and I couldn't bear not to post it. I caught this osprey and his prey at a pond near the Venice Rookery today. I bought a new monopod and a 2G memory card this weekend and was trying them out. I think the monopod allowed me to take this shot without it coming out blurry, and I filled up the 2G card with 500 pictures, mostly of this same osprey.
Real quick, here's a picture of a bald eagle. I found this fellow and his mate down at Stump Pass State Park near Englewood, FL. He was way on the other side of the Intercoastal Waterway, so I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get anything other than by usual blurry, far away pictures, but fate had something a little better in mind. A nearby boater asked me what kind of bird I was shooting. I told him it was a bald eagle, then, being braver than usual, I asked him if he minded giving me a ride to the other side to take a closer look. He said sure, but then another boater came along and needed a tow. I told him to take care of the fellow mariner in distress, and he promised to come back. It took an hour, but the fellow was as good as his word and returned. We still weren't able to get too close to the eagles, and the light was rapidly failing, but I got a pretty good shot. I've got plenty more I want to share, but it's late, and I have to go away on business in the morning. Hopefully I'll get more pictures posted during the week.
Almost forgot to post the monthly picture for April. It's only the second day of the month, though, so I guess I'm not doing too bad. This large statue is on the side of the Hope Memorial Bridge in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. That's Terminal Tower in the background, which you may recognize in the upcoming Spiderman 3, as they are shooting there as I type this. I think I shared this picture out earlier while I was actually in Ohio, but I'm not sure. Anyway, it was good enough to make my monthly calender. I hope you enjoy it.
Oooh, here's a good one for the first full week in April. This was taken at the Virginia Kendall Ledges in Ohio. The path I was on wound down through these incredible rock formations overgrown with ferns. It was tough to get a good picture, since I was on the shaded side of the mountain, but I think this one came out quite nice.
I hadn't taken any night shots in a while, so I made it a point to try and get something this evening. This is the city of Sarasota as seen from the bridge between St. Armand's Key and City Island. There was an airplane flying over, which made the streak in the sky. Trust me, it wasn't a meteor shower.
Only one day on this weekly page, since Saturday was the first day of the month. I shot these leaves last year out at Myakka River State Park. This is about as exciting as we get color-wise here in Florida in the fall. I hope to get up to Ohio this year in the fall, and then I can show you some real color.
No, it's not November of 2004 again. This is just a nice picture from the calendar back then that shows the old barn I want to tell you about. This little barn was the subject of quite a few pictures over the years, both by me and by countless others who I saw pulled over along the side of the road to shoot it. But when I drove by the field the other day, the barn was gone. I don't know what happened to it. There wasn't any sign of a fire or a pile of debris in the field. There was no construction going on that might indicate the property had been sold for development. I know I've been by there since the end of the most recent hurricane season, and it was still standing then. I'm hoping maybe someone took it away to restore it, and someday it'll be placed back out in it's natural habitat. Not only is this small barn attractive, it is a great example of a unique Florida architectural invention, the hundred-acre barn. Since we don't have cold winters here in Florida, you never have to worry about fitting all of your cows into the barn at one time. So this barn was developed to meet the needs of the local farmers, being just large enough to store the necessary supplies for a farm that was, well, 100 acres in size.
If anyone knows what happened to this barn, which was located near the intersection of US 41 and I-275 north of Palmetto, FL, please drop me a line. I'm going to miss it. Even before I started taking pictures, I drove by it and thought how picturesque it was.
Sometimes I like to flip through my old photos and see what I might have missed at the time. I found this sky shot from last October just now, and thought it was pretty neat. I'm sure I had some odd filter turned on when I took it, since the sky certainly wasn't that blue at the time. But it's a neat effect, don't ya think?
It's the last week in March, finally. For those of us here in Florida, the weather is pretty nice. For those of you elsewhere, it may not be so nice. But maybe this picture of a boat floating lazily in New Pass between Longboat Key and City Island in Sarasota will warm you up just a little and help you get through the last little bit of winter.
I spotted this male cardinal at my parent's house this afternoon. I tried to get closer to get a little clearer picture, but he flew off before I got the chance. I've got a big whopping refund coming from the IRS this year, and I'm thinking about investing it in a longer lens. Then I should really start to get some good shots. Of course, I'll also have to invest in a monopod with a fancy head, and that will take up most of the rest of the refund.
I was up in Lakeland today, and as I drove through downtown, I saw this star. I remember seeing it as a kid, all lit up in neon over top of a car dealer's lot. I have no idea how old it is, or if it even still works, but I was pretty surprised to see it was still there. As far as I know, this is the only piece of Googie architecture in the city of Lakeland. Is it really Googie, though? It's not really architecture, since it's just an eye-catching sign. I'll have to consult the rulebook.
In yet another sign of spring, here are some baby ducks. Cute little things, aren't they? Especially the tired one below.
As if the vernal equinox the other day didn't tell you it was spring, maybe the flowers will.
Here's a neat shot of The Pier in St. Pete, Florida. I was up there this evening seeing an old friend. Whenever I shoot in St. Pete, I have a real good time, get some good pictures, and want to get back soon, but then I forget to go up there. I don't know why that is.
Here's a view you don't see every day of the common brown pelican. They're goofy looking birds when you get close to them.
How about a double shot from Hugo Winterhalter tonight? Well, a double shot from the same album. Both of the fellows you see above are representations of Hugo Winterhalter from his album 2 Sides Of Winterhalter (RCA Victor LSP-1905, 1959). I don't have a scan of it, but even the LP cover features a shot of two Mr. Winterhalters. I do have a shot of the tag from the front cover, with the line "Winterhalter Contrasts".
