Sorry, that is adding to the anxiety I'm sure. Try to look past that part to where we're sprinting around at an airshow down the the line after you're back to 110%. Keep me posted.
UGh, that's awful. In the meantime, I hope getting around isn't too painful on the bum knee. Still shooting equine events?
ELinder wrote:
Thanks for asking, the surgeon is so swamped I've got another 2 months to wait. Nothing like a good long while to agonize over something, eh? :-)
Six hours in the air, much as I love it, is plenty for one day. Love and DFW controllers were great and we were all over their airspace, not a single hold, move, or get out! Got to love that when the clock is ticking at $20 a minute. Feels good to have 8 weeks of aerials current in one day, whew! Setting up for a dusk pool shoot in a minute and then a shower and my pillows.
JWilsonphoto wrote:
Six hours in the air, much as I love it, is plenty for one day. Love and DFW controllers were great and we were all over their airspace, not a single hold, move, or get out! Got to love that when the clock is ticking at $20 a minute. Feels good to have 8 weeks of aerials current in one day, whew! Setting up for a dusk pool shoot in a minute and then a shower and my pillows.
Humm .... I'm assuming that's six hours in a giant egg beater, with the doors off? That being so I’m feeling ill – need a dark room and a sit down.
In any event that sounds like a very well planned mission. It’s amazing (to me at least) the number of stories I’ve been told where guys have got into trouble with controlled air space and not realized that they’ve gone about things in such a way as to give the controllers no choice but to yell at them.
Hope the evening by the pool went well.... I trust, with no need for an improvised underwater housing.
Yes, that was all in the egg beater. I was feeling pretty good as I headed home late last night, because I got all of that aerial work caught up, then I realized that I have about a week's worth of post processing ahead of me Next week looks like clouds and rain so maybe I'll just hide out at HQ and get it all done at my happy place.
Re: controllers, you can sure see why they might be a bit testy, many people combine poor communication skills with not listening and complying, frustrating at the least, lethal on the other end of the scale. I have a great system going with my helicopter pilots, they know that I am very organized and efficient and the controllers are so used to how well we work that they rarely delay us. Andrew is from the UK, he's my go to rotor guy and he is excellent. Besides being one of you charming folks, his accent makes him immediately distinguishable from all the other voices on the frequency. ATC has a comfort level with Andrew and Andrew has confidence in mobbing able to get the shots in minimal time so it all works very well. The previous helicopter team grumbled that they weren't allowed into several of their locations yesterday, and we had nothing but smooth sailing. We were in between the runaway at DFW, right beneath approaches at Love and DFW, but they knew we were not going to do anything dumb and they could trust us to get in, comply and get out.
The pool shoot went well, but I'll confess to having to muster enthusiasm and professionalism, cuz I was pretty beat. A day of wind, clouds and an occasional downpour is just what I needed for today.
Funny, I posted a comment awhile back on f Stoppers, it was in conjunction with an article on medium format cameras. I mentioned that Hasselblad, as far as I could tell, had no marketing people left and that a brand that was my staple for decades has all but vanished. I mentioned that I had requested a demo in response to a Hasselblad email I had received and there had been no response in over year. Lo and behold Hasselblad saw that and wrote me to apologize, offering a demo on any and all of their product line at my earliest convenience. Something about all of my years with Blad tugs at my heart strings, it was a remarkable line of equipment and I just loved what I could produce with it. Heck, i just loved having something so precision, with such a history in my hands, it gave me an indescribable feeling of pride and confidence. Hasselblad was always there for me over the decades, once I was photographing a sailing regatta and the boat we were using as a platform sunk at the mooring while we were at lunch. My Halliburton case with a Super Wide, two 500C/M's and a host of backs, lenses and accessories was in the hold, all lost. I had an architectural shoot the following week and I really needed my Super Wide. My Hasselblad rep was a good friend and a great guy, he called Goteborg and told them what had happened. Two days later a Fed-Ex arrived from Sweden, it was Professor Ernst Wildi's personal Super Wide with a hand penned note from Ernst telling me not to be in a rush to return it, and that Hasselblad was double timing it do make sure they got all of the new replacement gear shipped to my dealer asap. Now that's the kind of customer service that makes life long customers. Ernst and I became good friends though that experience.
I went to the Hasselblad user forum for grins, after the demo offer arrived, but I don't think I'll even bother with it. The forum is filled with photographers who have invested 30K and up on the digital iterations of the product, and all of the posts contain some degree of sad disappointment and frustration with glitchy firmware, unreliable back performance, unresponsive customer service, etc. What a shame that a company with such a lofty and well earned reputation for across the board excellence, is ending up 180 degrees from that revered position. I would have a 100MP system if I thought for a moment the company had maintained their edge, but alas. My guess is having been owned by a series of hedge funds only interested in the bottom line, combined with that "we are Hasselblad!" too prominent to fail attitude, has left them in their current state. What a shame.
There's something going on with notifications I think. I have it set to notify me of a new post, but I haven't been getting that. When I look at the forum page, the list shows the last post made over a day ago despite your recent postings.
edit: Aaand of course after I post that it properly shows how recent the posts are.
a year ago Jim kept encouraging me to work at getting a contact at my local airport to get me out on the tarmac, he was right, i talked to people and they have seen me enough that i now have a nice guy that'll take me out,
Thanks Jim for encouraging me to get it done
some shots from the last couple days with the D850
now i just need to work on these guys to park them better for less cluttered bg's
JWilsonphoto wrote:
Man, we’re dead around here. Has MA2A finally reached its tipping point?
I see what you mean Jim. As I recall, much the same thing happened last year. Clearly, this place has to change / evolve / end – such is life. I’m frustrated that my contributions have been so sporadic recently. Hopefully, as the show season kicks in, we will get more folks joining in. Sadly, I am unlikely to be doing any air show photography this season, given previous experience with the time it takes for my iron levels to normalise. Right now I’d be happy to manage a couple of hours of gentle garden photography. I know that most of our contributors are in the US, so the disruptive and polarising nature of recent events resulted in some of our friends feeling unable to continue dropping by. That’s sad for us, but it’s tragic for the US. Lets see if thing pick up again.
JWilsonphoto wrote:
Two people killed in a T-6 crash at Kingsville NAS this afternoon. No identities. I've never seen the T-6, unusual scheme, yellow and bright green.
Jim,
It's only unusual on a T-6, not the SNJ. A standard Navy/Marines training squadron color scheme was Yellow overall with colored stripes located on the fuse aft of the canopy, on the wings near the joint between the center section and outer panel, wingtips and cowl sometimes. The stripes colors differed between squadrons.
Don't know what the airframe actually was, but it's painted as an SNJ.
