Hey Guys,
After an absence of nearly 3 months, I finally made the trek back up to Dulles for some spotting. This was to be my first spotting trip with my new 7D, and it is due to the learning curve associated with this and some resulting changes to my workflow that these photos weren't posted yesterday . With my 100-400 and 50D visiting Canon down in Newport News for some lovely R&R (that's Repair and Recalibration mind you), I shot the entire day with the 7D+ EF 400mm F5.6. Definitely learned a lot, and definitely messed up quite a bit too. Decided to also start trying my hand at shooting full manual in the evening.
The day can best be summarized as morning rocked, afternoon was dang awful, and the evening rocked. As I'm dealing with a new setup, I would love all the feedback I can get from y'all on these shots. I find I am often blind to my images' deficiencies until they are pointed out to me.
This photo was taken a few minutes before sunrise (and cleaned up heavily from ISO 1600 or 2000. I love the reflection of the coming sunrise on the nacelles
If you like Business Aviation, then Dulles was the place to be that morning. It was Gulfstreams galore, with a few additional bonus guests
And in a world populated by Citations, Lears, and Gulfstreams, the Falcon by Dassault has to be the Queen of the Corporate Jets
Mainline action was scarce as heck during the morning, which is the usual case at IAD. Mornings can be rather slow. Virgin America was a nice treat however.
This was only my 2nd time in numerous IAD trips catching my favorite international visitor, Ethiopian's 777LR from Addis Ababa (via Rome)
The tower had been giving bird warnings to the larger aircraft landing on 1C. I never actually saw any until ANA landed. Then they were everywhere.
The light at Udvar Hazy was bad enough to not warrant sharing any of those pics. The only event of interest was a go around by Air France 28 Super due to wind shear. The tower was reporting gains and losses of 20 knots at times. Departures, thankfully, still happened off of 1R, which was a first for me.
The Super
The "star" of the evening (bad pun intended)
The left turns were much appreciated when the tower called them out
This was my first time catching South African in acceptable shooting conditions :)
Austrian's 767s have to be among the sharpest looking out there, especially with those winglets
KLM crossing paths with a contrailing AA 737-800 (I believe)
First time seeing an SAS A330 instead of the usual A340
United put on a good show with their 777s
But this ex-CO 757 wins best turn out of the night as far as I'm concerned
And last is a somewhat whimsical shot on my part. I spent all night waiting for someone small enough to fly close enough to the American Flag that was flying in between me and the runway. It took 2 hours, but someone finally did, and gave me what ended up being my favorite shot of the night, albeit a slightly unusual one
As usual, I hope you have enjoyed!
Nick
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