Da plane, boss. Da plane!

We made it to the Miramar Airshow last weekend (10/14) for the 2nd time in two years. Last year we had box seats. This time we upgraded to the observation deck. (Apparently we're too good for the grandstand.) And so yeah, that makes me a week late with these photos. But c'mon. I took 571 shots, whittled them down to 122 keepers and settled on 50 for upload. I'm surprised it didn't take longer. Anyhoo...

Prior to the show, I perused through some forums to see if there were any tips on shooting airshows and also to see any sample galleries. I came to realize that these shows are more or less playgrounds for camera jockey's and their "great zoom lenses". These galleries show shot after shot of closeups of planes in flight. I mean, the planes might as well be on the ground. Granted there are some really awesome photos, especially those showing vapor trails and shock waves and what have you, but still, it's just not my style.

Lucky for us, it rained in the morning. Normally that'd be a bad thing, but being in San Diego and all, the rain stopped by the time the demostrations started and a ton of clouds remained. This gave me shots like this, this and this. And so I think it worked out for me. Especially considering I don't have one of those crazy zooms like this guy:



see the whole set

Almost Famous

Here's the story...

Yesterday morning, after logging off Flickr, I saw a little promo advert for the Yahoo! Time Capsule. I had some time before I had to get ready for work and so I check it out. It turns out to be pretty cool and I figure it'll be fun to contribute. Going through my photos, I settle on the shot above for the "Love" category (with my description being "What I love is having friends with you to explore the beauties on the other side of the world"). I submit it, get ready for work and leave.

Shortly after arriving to work, I check my email to see if the photo was accepted, which it is, but the first email I actually see is from Eva Freeman with the subject "ABC News - Request for an Interview". She apparently saw my submission and wanted to ask me some questions for a piece ABC News is doing for their webcast. Holy crap! Seriously though, what are the odds of me submitting a photo in the morning and then being contacted for an interview about it just a couple hours later? I was pretty stoked, but I figured I call my sis first (she works as a producer for the local ABC affiliate). She didn't recognize the name, but did note that is how she contacts people for interviews at times. I called this Eva after lunch and answered her questions (I didn't answer them too well, tho), but the conversation sounded more like she was just looking for permission to use the photo. Anyway, we finish and she tells me I should see it when they air at 3:30pm EST on their site. Holy crap!

Today rolls around. My spirits are up because I finally got my moo MiniCards (see previous post) and I have the webcast to look forward to. I've already emailed a bunch of people to tune in. I decide, however, to skip the live feed and wait until it's available again at 1:30pm. 1:30 rolls around. No webcast. 2 o'clock. Nothing. 2:30. Still nothing. Finally, it's up around 3pm. 13 minutes into the webcast and they do the time capsule piece. 2 minutes later, it's done. My photo is nowhere to be seen. :(

And that's my story.

moo.

Woo hoo! I finally got my free ten pack of moo MiniCards. What? You don't know what they are? You're not hip to the skinny, eh? You can go here to find out all about them or you can click the photo and look at it in a larger size or you can just read on...

These moo MiniCards are little cards (hence the name) that have a photo on one side and info on the opposite. My info consists of this blog and Flickrstream URLs and my email addy. Basically a tiny business card. So how small are they? Compared to standard business card, they're this small:



And now that I've got these, I'm tempted to order the hundo pack, but I'm not sure what I'd do with them. Well, obviously I'd want to give them out, but would people actually want them? I suppose I'd have to be more selective in the photos I choose since not everyone would want a little photo of my cats in their wallet.

Even though they should.