Sandy's bday is coming up and I have no idea what to get her...
As a kid, I used to go to El Toro air show with my cousin to watch the military aircraft and Blue Angels demonstrate their aerial acrobatics. That base was eventually decomissioned in 1999 and the skies overhead went quiet. Recently, we took the kids down to the San Diego Zoo. Along the 5 freeway, we noticed a big sign in regards to the Miramar Airshow. Sandy commented on how both Megan and Ethan are quite fascinated by airplanes. They would always stop what they were doing and point into the air when they heard or saw an airplane flying over. Driving past John Wayne Airport is always a fun adventure for the kids as the commercial airplanes fly low over the freeway. This weekend, we packed up the kids and headed down the to Miramar to check out the show.
It took us about an hour to drive down there. Right when we got off the freeway, we noticed this long line of cars in the far right lane. Since it was free admission and parking, it seemed like everybody and their mother were going to the airshow too. As we waited in line, we could hear and see the fighter planes zooming in the skies above. We all got excited with anticipation.
1 hour later...we finally got into the parking lot and broke out the double stroller and backpacks. We came prepared with folding camping chairs, attachable mini umbrellas for shade, and plenty of food and drinks. We even had a rolling cooler. For some reason, there was some confusion in regards to if the cooler was allowable on the base. I asked the first marine guard I saw and he said that it was not allowed depending upon the size of it. I then took out the cooler from the suv and showed it to the next passing marine guard. He said it was fine. Relieved we packed up the kids and marched into the base. There was a series of check points, where the marines had to search through all of our belongings (looking for Al-Qaeda terrorists I guess?) before allowing us to proceed. At the first check point, one of the marines explained to me that the cooler was too big and thus not allowed. I was annoyed that I had to schlepp back to the car and empty the cooler into the backpacks.
Having finally passed inspection, we proceeded on with our march and boy was it a march. I think it came out to be about a 1 mile march from our car to our eventual destination where we finally settled down. We joined the hordes of other civilians who were also schlepping along the sidewalks with their strollers and backpacks. At one intersection, Sandy asked me if we could just cut across the road before actually getting to the intersection. The marine guard must have heard her and immediately barked out, "STAY ON THE SIDEWALK!!!" I laughed at Sandy and joked, "You better listen to what he said or he may shoot you." Sandy gave a nervous giggle.
It was a beautiful day; clear blue skies with only a few clouds here and there. There was a fantastic breeze blowing in off the ocean and the temperature was in the low 70s. After we got the kids settled and the food and drinks dispersed, I got out my camera to take some shots. It was alot of fun and challenge to shoot actually. I had thought naively that since I have alot of experience shooting birds and dragonflies in flight, shooting a fighter plane flying in the air would not be anymore difficult. I was wrong. It's easy to track and shoot a plane flying far in the distance, but when they blast over the runway in very close proximity, I am constantly amazed at the speed that they fly past me. Sometimes I'll have trouble keeping them in my viewfinder as I am rotating my body to get the shot. Here are a couple of shots that would have been nice, but again since they were flying so close to me and at such high speeds, I just couldn't keep them centered in my viewfinder.
The other problem I discovered later was that my exposure was off. I was worried since I was shooting at pretty much high noon that the shots would come out over exposed so I dialed in a -1 exposure compensation when I first took out my camera. I later got so wrapped up in watching and shooting the fighter planes as they zipped around in the skies above, that I forgot to check my histograms. Turns out that the majority of my shots came out underexposed. Ah well, live and learn.
The second mistake I made was that I was just rippng through my memory card at too fast a rate. It is so fun to hold down the shutter release and let rip with the continous shooting mode as the fighter planes flew by. My canon 20D shoots at 5 frames per second. I only have one 2 gig memory card and I had already filled up about 75% of the card only 2 hours into the show. This came back to haunt me later when the Blue Angels finally came out. I ran out of memory on my card about 1/2 way into their performance. I missed some potentially great shots after that point. Darn it! I need to get another memory card.
The other challenging part of the day was the fact that Megan was scared of the loud fighter plane engines. She cried and begged to be hugged. I knew this was going to happen. She had the same reaction on the fourth of July to all the fireworks. Ethan on the other had a great time. I kept him busy in his stroller seat by placing chips for him to eat in front of him. With one hand he would munch on a chip and with his other hand, he would point at the fighter planes as they flew over us.
Here is a shot of some of the Blue Angels Fighter pilots. They rode out onto the tarmac on the top of a convertable waving to the crowds.
The Blue Angels are simply amazing to watch. There are 6 of them total. Usually 4 of them are together while the other 2 perform different tricks. Every once in a while the 4 of them will fly by in front of the crowds to distract us and then one of the other 2 will fly super fast over the crowds from a different direction. Since they fly faster than the speed of sound, you never hear him coming until he has already flown over. At which point, the crowd is usually caught "surprised" as the flight plane's engine booms overhead.
Here's a tight shot when one of them flew by really close. Since I was shooting with my 400mm lens and could not zoom out to get the entire plane, I chose to focus on the cockpit and pilot.
Alot of my shots didn't come out as well as I would have hoped.The planes mostly approached the crowds going West to East. Unfortunately for me, the sun was high in the west and would create these blacklit shots. I'm not sure how I could have done it different since I really could not change my position in regards to the planes and the sun.
Here is a shot of Fat Albert. It is the name of the C-130 Transport Plane that belongs to the support crew of the Blue Angels. It even got into the swing of things by performing some interesting maneuvers and flybys.
Alot of the planes have these condensation trails over their wings when they bank hard. This F-22 Raptor was flying overhead and so I got a nice silhoutte shot of the plane and the whispy condensation trial.
If it was later in the evening, these afterburner shots would have lit up even better!
Here is a shot of the C130 Transport plane on the ground.
Here is a Harrier demonstrating it's vertical take off capability.
Four Blue Angels flying in their classic diamond formation.
A little boy in a flight suite. They sure do recruite them young these days!
