Before you the reader complains that I'm going out of order, first remember that I belonged to the slackers back in High School, it's amazing I'm still actively working on this blog! It seems like I've been so busy the past few weeks, this entry needed me to dig through thousand plus pictures! This, of course, is a weekend review of my 4th of July airshow weekend.
Last year was my first ever airshow. I knew what to expect this time around and it helped. To prove that I'm learning, last year I took every photo on action mode. It worked great, except when taking pictures of the WWII aircraft, my shutter speed was so high that it froze the plane's propellers. When looking at those pictures, they look they are toy models or at least like they should drop out of the sky because their prop has stopped, not planes in motion. I did improve on that mistake from last year. I still made some that I won't admit to this year, but lets pretend I didn't make any!
I enjoy the luck of these two shots. Maybe I'm the only one that sees it, but to me, the cloud looks exactly like the F-18 I took earlier in the day:
It was a gorgeous day for an airshow, the morning didn't have a cloud in the sky and the temps were mid 70's, perfect! This year was a special treat because I received an invite to attend a private party at the airshow. This was awesome because it gave me access to a great area to watch the show with only a handful of people. Instead of being in the mobs of people with the smelly, dirty, loud kids crawling all over me and endangering my equipment, it was open with plenty of room to stretch out and not have to worry about my stuff.
Here is a shot of the F-15 and P-51 doing the Heritage flight:
Last year I thought the airshow dragged on and on with too many stunt planes and not enough cool planes. In the end, it probably turned out to be equal with the number of jets to stunt planes as the year before, but this year I thought they did a better job of mixing the planes together. It was nice to only watch a couple of prop planes, then get jets, instead of five prop planes in a row being put to sleep. I was especially excited to see an F-15 this year. Wow, is that plane impressive.
The headliner group this year was the Thunderbirds. The Blue Angels show was great last year and I love the F-16, so I thought for sure the Thunderbird's show would be out of this world. With that setup, you know a but is coming. I really wasn't impressed with the Thunderbirds. Even though the Angels and the Thuderbirds do roughly the same routine, it just wasn't as fun for me. I can't place my finger on one thing, but the white F-16's don't look as good in the sky as the blue F-18's and I being the harsh judge that I am, the Thuderbirds weren't as precise as the Blue Angels were and finally I don't think their show lasted as long. That part was strange too, for some reason after the show ended, the Thuderbirds continued to practice, which was cool because I got more pictures, but they were doing moves they didn't do in the show. It left me feeling like we didn't get a full show and in the end left me disappointed because I always thought the Thunderbirds were better then those Navy clowns in the Blue Angels! Turns out I was wrong to ever doubt the colors of Maze and Blue of the Blue Angels (haha even got a U of M reference in with an airshow)!
The evening ended with fireworks. It seems silly saying this, especially after a day of always wanting to be closer, but I think we were too close to the fireworks. I think fireworks look so much better with an object in the frame, the best I could do was the fence I was sitting in front of. One of these years, I'll find a great spot to watch the fireworks from, yet have something interesting in the shot. Until then, these are nothing more then practice!
Even though I was a little disappointed with the show, it was fun.
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