Tonight I thought I’d post another plane from the Flying Heritage Collection and chose this simply named Focke-Wulf FW 190 D-13 – yeah I know it’s a bit of a mouthful.

While I was there I was trying to find a different perspective for some of the pictures, you know what I mean, not just a side on shot of a plane.  Sometimes it’s interesting to see something familiar from a different angle.

So when I got home I looked at my images, and guess what?  I had a load of side shots of planes, or even more common, the shot from directly in front, looking at the propellers.   Wonderful!  Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with those shots, some looked good (and I’ll post them too), but it’s not exactly original.

But then I came across this D-13 and immediately loved the angle from the rear.  Having the tail so close and tack sharp in focus delivered I thought a great image.  Add to that great green camouflage and this plane looks cool.

You can probably see how close these planes are packed in the hanger so getting something different is a little challenging.  But fortunately there were lots of exhibits from the US, UK, Germany, Japan and Russia, so there was lots to choose from.

So what about the plane (got-a make it a bit educational).  This German design came quite late in the second world war and competed well against the US Mustang and the late model British Spitfires on even terms.

This particular plane is the only 190 D-13 that survived the war, the aircraft entered service in March 1945 and served as a commanders plane in “Fighter Wing 26”.

Carter and Master Chief wanted some nuts.  ‘nough said!

I was in Seattle the other day down by the water front, like you do, and the sun was setting, like it does, and it kind-a looked really cool.  So I thought I’d take a picture, and the pictures looked, well just OK.  I think what grabbed my attention for a picture was the sunset and the moon high above, but in all my pictures I didn’t really get the right shot, principally because I was shooting in landscape, not portrait.  So I turned the camera on its side and captured the shot below.

Now there are advantages and disadvantages of shooting in portrait orientation.  I think the image I wanted (and got) worked really well in this format.  I really like the layers in the image; you have the calm water at the bottom, then that beautiful sunset with fluffy clouds, then above that some darker mottled clouds and finally some clear sky with the waxing crescent moon (I had to look that up).  The layers for me really make this image.

Unfortunately I don’t think portrait images work that well on the blog site (hence I don’t post them very often), but on a positive side, I now have a new phone lock screen image.

Yesterday Master Chief got to meet Carters horse, not to be out done, he got his ride out today.

As I’d exhausted my backlog of cars, I decided to go back to Redmond’s “Exotics” car show.  This show is on every weekend (weather permitting) and each week they have a different theme.

This weekend it was “British Car” week, so I went along to see what I could find.  I expected to see lots of Lotus and Jaguar’s (and wasn’t disappointed), but there were loads of manufactures that were conspicuous by to their absence.  For example, only one TVR (and it was it poor condition), no Triumphs (couldn’t believe that), not one Spitfire or Stag (my favorite) and only two MGs and no MGBGT – a wonderful car.

So it was a little disappointing and if I see one more Lamborghini at these shows I’ll scream – sorry James, I know you love them.  Having said all this there were some beautiful cars there and I got some nice pictures.

Despite the British theme, my posting tonight is a Porsche – funny eh?  This is an old Porsche 356 Speedster.  It was parked in a great position with some nice bushes behind, and nobody was in shot!  That’s pretty rare at these things you have to have the patience of a saint as there is always someone in the way.  But for this image I was lucky.

I loved the cream/yellow color of this car and the chrome on the front really set it off.  It was in fantastic condition, absolutely beautiful.  If I owned a Porsche, it would have to be one of these – but as it’s a convertible, it’s not really a car for Washington State.

This afternoon Carter decided to show Master Chief his new ride.  I think Master Chief was a little jealous.

Ask yourself this question.  You make your first billion dollars, what do you do?  Well if you’re Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft), you might start collecting World War II aircraft and decide to display them in a massive hanger.  I don’t know when he started to do this but that’s exactly what Paul did.  He purchased aircraft from all over the world and shipped them to Everett in Washington.  What’s more, he insisted that they all work and are taken out and flown each year.

His collection is exhibited by what’s called the Flying Heritage Collection.  So today I drove to Everett with a friend (Chris) to check out the collection.

There were no planes flying today, but we thought we’d check it our anyway.  On their web site all the planes appear to be outside on grass or on the runway.  But when we arrived they were all inside a large hanger.  This was both good and bad.  The good part was that there was no hard sunlight on the aircraft making lighting and pictures difficult.  The bad part was that the surroundings weren’t as nice.

As a result I took a lot of close up shots, trying to minimize the other planes and distractions around the subject I was going for, but I couldn’t help myself take some wide shots of a complete plane too, and at the end of the day I captured a lot of really nice pictures.

Today’s image is a B-25J Mitchell Bomber.  These planes were used by all the allied forces in World War II and in 1942 the B-25 was the first U.S. aircraft to bomb mainland Japan.  This particular plane was build towards the end of 1944 in Kansas City and severed in the Royal Canadian Air Force for 10 years before being sold as surplus in 1961.  After spending some time as a “fire-bomber” carrying water for the Cascade Drilling Company in Calgary it was purchased by the Flying Heritage Collection.

The aircraft is both amazing and terrifying at the same time.  The thought of sitting in the nose cone shooting the enemy just scares me to death.  I talked to some of the retired pilots and none of them talked of fear.  They were all young at the time of active service and just talked about the thrill of battle and the exhilaration of “winning”.   I served in the Armed Forces for 9 years but I don’t think war is like that.  I suspect the years have somewhat romanticized their experiences, but they were all amazing characters to talk to.

So look for more planes in the coming weeks, I’ll try to spread them out so you don’t get them all at once.  Enjoy.

After today’s visit to the Flying Heritage Collection (Museum) Master Chief had an OCD moment and insisted on washing all over in Purell!

Today was a beautiful day, 80+ degrees and blue sky.  So this afternoon I decided to drive over the Seattle and grab some pictures of people enjoying the sun.  In the end I found myself by Lake Union watching the boats on the lake.

Lake Union is also a landing strip for sea planes and I took a few shots of some planes taking off and landing.  But I wasn’t really in the best place and while some of the images were OK, I felt I could get a better shot on another day.  So the sea plane images went in the trash.

There were some beautiful sail boats on the lake too and they were moving at a heck of a pace across the water.  One I saw was almost on its side as it cut across the lake, it was really impressive.  But the boats were on the other side of the lake too far away even too far for my longest lens (Lisa I need a longer one) and the images I captured were also not great.

Then I saw these two ladies paddling past on their boards.  I grabbed a shot as they passed Gas Works Park in the background and I loved the image when I got home.  The water looked pretty smooth and they were traveling quite fast.  This sport amazes me, probably because I have terrible balance and would suck at it.  It looks so graceful (and I’m quite envious) so I decided to post this one tonight.

Lisa got the suitcases out today – we aren’t going to Maui until next Saturday!  But Carter and Master Chief got inspired and decided to do some Maui research.