Using Alaska Airlines as a private plane

When you have the zoom lens available on a flight, you can take pictures from the air.. of snow covered mountains above the clouds..

Got to do this on July 4th as we flew out of Seattle..

The white balance is tricky as we have to go through the glass window and some of the light reflecting off the window as well as the sun's angle on the clouds makes it difficult to guess. 

Then of course there is HDR processing that helps remove the glare and automatically puts the highlights and details. 

 

Have never taken my camera bag with me on any business trip. If there is no smiling wife or kid, feel no motivation to grab the camera bag. Also, I will have to check in bags and not looking forward to that. Will figure out something on next rip to Asia.. Maybe just the camera and the 24-105mm?!

It is always great to have a nice zoom on hand.. sometimes and iPhone doesnt cut it.. this was one of those times.

Start with the clouds

It has been a good three months since the India trip. There has been a lot more traveling, all work related. Interesting places, experiences, people! A lot to write about.

However, work dicates I keep my travel locations confidential. It is a funny request given I meet so many familiar faces at various international airport waiting lounges. Also, there are only a handful of fab locations in the world one can go to these days, if you group it by country!

For now, the request has to be honored.. so let's start with the clouds!

This picture was taken somewhere at 33000 feet above an ocean, with the iPhone 5S

Think that is generic enough!

Now don't start asking me which ocean.. 

While I was going through iPhone pictures, came across another recent one taken at Big Sur where we went camping a few months ago. 

Both photos were sent through Photoshop for the same reasons. The first photo had way too many light spots from the plane window. So eliminated them on the middle of the picture. The second one had raindrops on the windshield which showed. Removed most of the drops that showed up on the road (you can still see the drops on the tree and sides). 

Here are two photos taken with the 5D Mark II the previous evening at Big Sur.

Have now found a new treasure trove of pictures on my iPhone. 

A friend who works at Adobe just got me a copy of the latest Lightroom! 

Apparently presets are a breeze with Lightroom. Will tell you how it goes soon.. 

Airshow by accident

Over the weekend we decided to take visiting relatives to Ghirardelli's Chocolate factory. It was my first driving experiment after surgery.

One mistake.. there was an air show in the city around the Pier area and that meant there was no way to anywhere near the Chocolate factory. After driving around for an hour and realizing there was no way to park anywhere close by, not to mention the "pee pee" calls from the kids, we had to make a hasty retreat back out of the pier area.

Luckily when we stopped almost close to the freeway entrance, the planes were still circling around and the camera was in the trunk!

Quickly mounted the 70-200 and clicked a few shots from the sidewalk. The wife was surprised by my impulsiveness but when we came home and she saw the photos, her jaw dropped..

"How did you take that one?" she asked.

Told her that support in buying the 70-200mm is much appreciated. When she realized that she was the proud financier of such worthy equipment, she was beaming!

Next year, we are going to the airshow and parking ourselves at a vantage location for photograph session!

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