From a private bus tour around O’Hare Airport.
Photo of Southern Air’s Boeing 747-200F (F for freight/cargo) by Duane Rapp. See the original photo.
Tag: photo
Spires above the clouds
I met with a friend of a friend yesterday to talk to them about blogging and some strategies they can use to promote their eBooks.
I told her, “Post on your blog at least once a week and if you don’t have much to write, just post a new photo.”
I’m following my own advice, kind of.
Photo of downtown Chicago by Payton Chung, formerly of Chicago and now of Washington, D.C.
Cargo bike obsessiveness
You’ve never seen anything cuter than this.
Blue is a Yuba Mundo, v3
Pink is a DeFietsfabriek (now defunct) omafiets.
The park is Palmisano.
Seattle trip and new camera
My recent 6 night, 7 day trip to the Pacific Northwest gave me the perfect opportunity to test out my new camera that arrived only days before my departure.
I purchased a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX5V (Sony should follow a simpler product naming scheme) from RitzCamera.com (which seems to be a different operation than Ritz Camera stores).
I bought the camera for its HD video (1080i60), decent image quality, wide-angle lens, and loads of neat features. I used the camera on every day of my trip and the results please me. The most significant neat feature is a mode called “Handheld Twilight.” The camera takes up to six shots (in one second) at different exposure and ISO settings, and then blends the photos together – and without flash. Because of this feature and the other low-light enhancing features, I don’t think I used the flash more than once or twice on my trip.
This photo of the Space Needle at Seattle Center demonstrates the image quality as a result of Handheld Twilight mode.
This photo shows the lens width. I held the camera at less than arm’s length.
Another mode that helps in low-light situations is Anti-motion Blur. I’m not really sure of the difference between this mode and the Handheld Twilight mode (both take multiple shots in quick succession), but whenever I saw the flashing hand that indicates a probably shaky picture, I switched the camera to Anti-motion Blur. Great photos emerged!
Boeing plane spotting in Marana, Arizona
A lot of people got really excited when the first Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft took off from their testing airfield outside Seattle, Washington, on December 15, 2009.
I found the videos mildly interesting (it shows the “Delay Liner” lifting off and landing). It seemed like the top topic on Twitter that day.
But traveling to Tucson, Arizona, 11 days later (December 26), I spotted the Dreamlifter, or Boeing’s modified 747-400 large cargo lifter. It looks like a 747 (the largest passenger plane until the Airbus A380 came along) with a hunchback (or broad shoulders). I didn’t see it flying, but I saw it a couple miles away from a highway while it sat and waited for something at the Pinal Airpark. Pinal Airpark hosts a boneyard for unneeded airplanes; Northwest Airlines keeps many planes there (see photo at end).
The plane is unmistakable, even from a distance. Measuring perpendicularly from I-10 (going southeast), the runway is 2.6 miles from the road. I believe this plane sat about .2 miles closer, on the maintenance tarmac.
However, it’s more likely the Dreamlifter is waiting for a fixup at the on-site Evergreen Aircraft Maintenance Center. Evergreen International Airlines (unrelated to the Evergreen Group of shipping companies in China) operates the Large Cargo Lifters for Boeing. The Dreamlifter is named such because it typically carries parts from suppliers around the world to the Boeing assembly plant in Everett, Washington.
And not to be outdone, Airbus has a funnier looking plane called the Beluga.
A satellite photo from July 2, 2005, shows the many Northwest Airlines planes parked at the Pinal Airpark boneyard. Their red livery gives them away.