Photographing.....the airports

Hopefully very soon, the harsh sunlight, alternating with rainy afternoons in South Florida will be a thing of the past and the easier days of Fall will allow the shooting season to begin. The Fall season, along with the arrival of the snowbirds from up north tends to bring the special schemes, rare catches and great photography back to this area of the country - I can't wait!

So, for this blog entry, I thought I'd move the focus away from the aircraft, and concentrate a little on where the take off from and land at. One my second trip to the New York area, I flew into LGA instead of JFK and it was on the way back home that I got my first shot of an overview of an airport. Thanks to runway in use, winds, and the shooting gods all aligning perfectly, after take off, we turned back over Rikers Island and looking out from my seat, I saw the whole of La Guardia airport below me. Quickly unpacking the camera, I started to shoot down, hoping that there was no dirt on the windows - and editing later - I was very happy with the result.



After seeing this, every time I have flown out of or into an airport where these types of shots can be taken, I've tried to get a decent shot.

The next one to get was after departing my home airport, Palm Beach International on the way to Houston. I'd tried several times to get a Palm Beach overview and was always stumped by bad light, clouds or just plain bad weather. This time, I thought the same was going to be true when I saw the clouds in my view finder. It was a week before I was able to get home and look at the shots, and, out of the 10 that I did shoot, one finally I was able to get the airport in. Clouds nearly took over again, but, I was happy with the shot.



Houston was one that I had been trying to get for a long time as well. Travelling from Florida to the north west of Texas where we have family, we always try to get through Houston on our favorite domestic airline (no hints of course :) ). Again, it took quite a few visits at different times of the day before I finally got a shot I liked. It seemed like the runway in use, winds, etc also finally aligned to get this one.



One shot that I have been trying to get for the longest time was a decent shot of a ramp or the whole airport at New York's JFK. Again, it takes the winds and runway in use to be able to get some decent shots of the airport at JFK. On my last trip to New York, I got lucky again. A departure off runway 13R, a seat on the left hand side of the plane and a fairly short take off roll lined up one of my favorite shots in my collection - the international ramp and jetBlue ramp at JFK.



One thing that the Fall tends to bring to Florida as well is the ability to get some night shots. I'm not too experienced at this, only having a couple of attempts, but, one of my to-do list items this fall is to try to start shooting the airports a little more at night - not too sure how well it's going to do - but - watch this space.

Some more time behind the camera lens over....