On My Way Home
Yeah, the weather is heating up and clouds across the country are starting to show a little billow. That’s good news for me because I love thunderstorm season. With my new Canon 5D Mark III
They say you shouldn’t upgrade your camera until you start bumping up against the limitations of your old camera. Well, here’s a photo that would not have been possible prior to the this latest generation of pro DSLRs. This is a view of San Jose, CA. The sun had already dropped below the horizon. I love the light at this time of day, but with my old camera there was just too much noise to make a pretty picture from the air with light this dim. Using my Mark III you can see detail in the rattlesnake infested hills at the lower left corner and there is minimal (but some) noise down in the dark valley.
*David is an San Francisco Bay Area Photographer . You can order prints of the photos featured on this blog by clicking on the image or visit our website at raboinphotography.com Support this site by using one of my links to Amazon.com
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Across the Great Basin
In the United Sates, most of us live comfortable lives in urban areas with our eyes glued to small screens. Small satisfactions are always just moments away. When was the last time you were more than five minutes from a Starbucks? It’s easy to forget that this country of ours is a large place. My job is to carry people safely across those often forgotten swaths of rural landscape. Here we are, six miles above The Great Basin. It’s dusk and the mountain ranges of Nevada slowly drift by. We’re flying from Chicago, the silver-grey capitol of the Midwest, to San Francisco — where this time of year the air smells like flowers and an endless procession of cargo ships baring gifts from China pass through the Golden Gate. The dusty mountains below will not be featured in the next REI catalog. I imagine a couple of ravens soaring along the snowy ridge line, their raucous calls echo down the canyons.
*David is an San Francisco Bay Area Photographer . You can order prints of the photos featured on this blog by clicking on the image or visit our website at raboinphotography.com Support this site by using one of my links to Amazon.com
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Clearing Storm — Bay Area
In California, the weather is at its most dramatic and photogenic during the brief period when winter storms clear out. This is because California’s air is inherently dry — very little moisture evaporates from the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean. Unlike the Midwest and east coast where moist air can linger for hours and days after frontal passage, when a storm clears in California it’s immediately followed by crystal clear, dry air. A lot of times this clear air mixes with the trailing edge of the proceeding storm and unique cloudscapes form. Probably the most famous California clearing storm photo is Ansel Adam’s Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite Valley, California
A couple weeks ago, I had the good fortune of flying into San Francisco as a major winter storm system was moving out. Our arrival also coincided with sunset. As Tom Petty sings, “Even the losers get lucky sometimes”. This was a major weather event — complete with snow on the highest hills of east bay and a couple stray thunderheads. California weather rarely gets more dramatic than this.
Here is a view of the southwestern edge of San Francisco Bay. Those are thunderheads in the distance. This photo speaks to both my inner weather nerd and geography geek. First of all, you can see pretty much every aspect of the water cycle contained in just one frame (rainclouds, streams, tidal estuary, bay, and ocean). Also, the hills in the background are part of the San Andreas Fault. Every piece of this tranquil scene is in some state of motion. Too bad it’s impossible to make a time lapse photo from this vantage point — you could watch the clouds evaporate, the tide move in and out, and if you waited long enough, the hills would move.
*David is an San Francisco Bay Area Photographer . You can order prints of the photos featured on this blog by clicking on the image or visit our website at raboinphotography.com Support this site by using one of my links to Amazon.com. Thanks!
Flight Patterns
The internet, at its best, is a place where ideas can cross-pollinate, take root, and eventually help us form a new understanding of ourselves. Yesterday, while perched on a sliver of aluminum six miles above the Sierras, I was thinking about a video — a video about Starlings. Continue reading “Flight Patterns” »
*David is an San Francisco Bay Area Photographer . You can order prints of the photos featured on this blog by clicking on the image or visit our website at raboinphotography.com Support this site by using one of my links to Amazon.com. Thanks!
Flight Test
I took my new Canon 5D Mark III flying this week. I didn’t see any spectacular cloud formations or sunsets over snow covered peaks. The weather was benign. This is a photo of the Florida gulf coast, just east of Tampa. A clear winter night in southern sky — the perfect place to test my new camera. We are headed west, flying from Orlando to San Francisco. The dark black area photo is the Gulf of Mexico. Look at the upper right corner of the frame. That faint orange glow is the fading light of sunset.
I’ve been carrying a DSLR on every trip I’ve flown since 2005. During an average year I fly around 800 hours. With the Mark3, I am confidant that I’ll be able to capture views that have never been photographed before. The excellent high ISO performance of the Mark3 is going to allow me to get photos when the sky looks the most beautiful, right before dawn and slightly after sunset. With previous cameras it was impossible to capture these low-light cloudscapes.
Keep checking back. As time goes on I hope to bring you some spectacular views.
*David is an San Francisco Bay Area Photographer . You can order prints of the photos featured on this blog by clicking on the image or visit our website at raboinphotography.com Support this site by using one of my links to Amazon.com. Thanks!
Gulf Coast Sunset
It’s the height of the holiday travel season and I’m working. The airports are filled with amateur travelers, babies, and Christmas music. I will survive. We have a very sturdy flight deck door. It was peaceful when I took this photo over the gulf coast yesterday evening. The sun was setting below a thin cloud layer. We were flying relatively low to stay below the jet stream, 32,000 feet.
*David is an San Francisco Bay Area Photographer . You can order prints of the photos featured on this blog by clicking on the image or visit our website at raboinphotography.com Support this site by using one of my links to Amazon.com
Desert City Sunset
Here you go, another photo of Las Vegas… I almost didn’t upload this one. This is like the 10th Las Vegas aerial photo I’ve posted in a row. I feel like I need to post more variety. I feel like I need to change my style. There is only one cure, and that is to continue working. Soon a path will become clear. Until then, enjoy this sunset view of Las Vegas. The sky in the Mojave is always most interesting in winter. The strong Pacific storms sometimes bring clouds into the basin.
*David is an San Francisco Bay Area Photographer . You can order prints of the photos featured on this blog by clicking on the image or visit our website at raboinphotography.com Support this site by using one of my links to Amazon.com
Winter Graces the Mojave
Here we are flying the Sunset Arrival into Las Vegas. Whoever came up with the name “Sunset Arrival” knew what they were doing. Here, an early season snow crowns Mount Charleston. Coincidentally, only 20 minutes prior to taking this photo, I was complaining to my first officer that I hadn’t gotten any good pictures in a long while. The squeaky wheel gets the oil??
We are close behind the front that dropped this snow… Continue reading “Winter Graces the Mojave” »
*David is an San Francisco Bay Area Photographer . You can order prints of the photos featured on this blog by clicking on the image or visit our website at raboinphotography.com Support this site by using one of my links to Amazon.com. Thanks!
Red Rocks Descent
There are two reasons why I post lots of pictures of Las Vegas:
1) I fly there a lot.
2) Las Vegas looks great from the air.
Here we are above Red Rocks State Park. The clouds were making interesting shadows on the desert floor.
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Blue Moon
According to Wikipedia there was a blue moon on September 1. I was flying at moonrise that day. The moon was sorta blue. We were over central Pennsylvania on our way to NYC when I snapped this photo of the full moon rising between cloud layers. And yes, the clouds really were this color. I could’ve made them blue in Photoshop, but what fun would that be?
*David is an San Francisco Bay Area Photographer . You can order prints of the photos featured on this blog by clicking on the image or visit our website at raboinphotography.com Support this site by using one of my links to Amazon.com. Thanks!