Another Sunday, another air show — yesterday was Wings Over Camarillo. Great air show for World War 2 era aircraft lovers — hey that's me.

But again no cool clouds, in fact no clouds at all. So to do something different, I made many exposures of smoke trailing aircraft framed with planes sitting on the ground. Its one way to shoot air shows without a long lens.

Wings Over Camarillo 2010 flickr set.

Sunday I flew down the 101 to Santa Paula for the air show. Problem was no clouds. The last couple of air shows had those white fluffy things in the sky I love to frame with aircraft. But not a puff to be seen on Sunday.

Ok no clouds, but Santa Paula Airport is tucked into a valley next to a cool mountain. My 300 mm lens compresses the cliffs into a dramatic background for aircraft.

The other saving grace — many aircraft provided their own clouds. Many of the pilots released great smoke trails allowing some drama — tons of smoke and tiny aircraft.

Enjoy the pics.

Santa Paula Air Show flickr set

B-17G flown by the Collins Foundation parked Saturday night at Burbank's Bob Hope Airport. Topaz Adjust used.

Rose left at water's edge at Port Hueneme following the memorial program for the victims of Alaska Airlines Flight 261. Eighty-eight people died following a mechanical failure on the aircraft on January 31, 2000. Over 400 attended the program held at the Memorial Sundial for Flight 261 located at Port Hueneme.

Additional photos are posted at the Los Angeles Times web site. Link.

Previously I have blogged about my love to just jump into the car and drive. No GPS for me. It's get lost time. Sunday after the soccer tournament in Bakersfield I jumped on Highway 58 and headed east to Mojave. Somewhere west of Tehachapi I spotted this cool Keene Cafe sign at a freeway exit and stopped to take some pics. Of course I then headed east on some back-road and after 30 minutes realized I was lost. Time to turn around and go back to Keene Cafe.

Once back on Highway 58, it was a stop in downtown Tehachapi. Among a bunch of cool Halloween inspired decorations was this witch, below.

Next stop was Mojave. I stopped at the entrance to Mojave Air & Space Port and shot a couple aircraft with the fading dusk including a Phantom jet fighter.

While in Mojave, I stopped for a sandwich at the local Cafe 58. While eating I found a copy of Aerotech News and Review newspaper to read. Buried inside was an article about volunteers cleaning up at Joe Davies Heritage Airpark at Plant 42 in Lancaster. A locally built half-scale Vietnam Wall memorial was also on display from November 13th till the 21st. It is open 24 hours a day. That meant extra lighting installed on the aircraft and the memorial wall.

Off to Plant 42.



Local veterans in the Antelope Valley in recent years built their own half-scale version of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC. This Viet Wall is named The Mobile Vietnam Veterans Memorial for the Antelope Valley. About $100,000 was raised to pay a local company to build the wall. Link to LATimes blog post.

A perfect way to remember the 70 soldiers with ties to the Antelope Valley who were killed in Vietnam.

Several more pics are on my Flickr page.

At 3 am this morning I stopped pushing pixels for the night. I am having too much fun with these Wings Over Camarillo. Above is an eight frame image from the Oktomat camera. Below is a single frame, very grainy, from a single frame from the Oktomat camera.

I am posting the image for now in a photo set on flickr. Link The set is named Wings Over Camarillo.

When done, I suspect I will post about 50 images. I am trying many different combinations of techniques, especially using Topaz Detail and Topaz Simplify.

Image from today's Wings over Camarillo airshow. I desaturated the image about 80% then restored some the aircraft color with a mask.


A B-25 flying near the end of the airshow. Made into black n white image.