Category: Guest Contributors
Tom’s World – 09SEP2024 – Museum Aircraft – 1
Tired of statues and would like to jump to another topic: museum aircraft
Most, but not all, of these shots were taken at the US Naval Air Museum, on board NAS Pensacola. I’ve been to the Smithsonian, Wright Patterson and scores of lesser museums but this museum is right at the top, world wide. The Blue Angels are based out of Pensacola, so you’ll see a lot of that. The Naval Museum concentrates on Naval stuff as you may suspect but there’s other noteworthy stuff there too, like a Messerschmitt Me 262 one of the very, very few still in existence. The ME 262 was the first ever jet to be used in combat.
This Navy NC-4 was the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic. Unlike Lindberg, it wasn’t solo and it wasn’t non stop. But it was in 1919 when most aircraft had max ranges in the hundred mile range or so. This by the way, the actual aircraft, not just the aircraft type. Talk about a beautiful restoration.
Corsair: The museum tends to be crowded with stuff just everywhere competing for visual attention. I shot this picture and was looking at it wondering what could be done with it and somehow ended up here.
An F18 outside one of the museum buildings.
00683: A B25 Mitchell bomber. This was principally an Army aircraft but the B25 won fame in early 1942 when the famous raid on Tokyo was launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet.
A little humorsep
Guest Contributor – War Pig – 10SEP2024 – California
Dad was s big name at North American Aviation, then Rockwell/Rocketdyne. He actually touched things that went in orbit in the space program. I have a ring the factory made for important people at Rocketdyne. It was made from a crazy, missile nose cone titanium alloy. Like tungsten carbide, it took diamonds to cut it. It had been tempered in the hellfire of reentry and was light yet incredibly string. We lived in places like Simi Valley, Canoga Park and then up in the Thousand Oaks area. Mom shopped at the then amazing Topanga Plaza. We went ice skating indoors. We’d go up Mt Baldy in the morning to play in the snow, then in the late afternoon, we swam and surfed at the public beaches. It was the days of Wolfman Jack, Dragnet and Adam-12. It was also the days of the Watts riots, but as my heritage is divided between Caucasian and Native American, neither side had an issue with me. Mexican, Black and White kids got on amazingly well in school. Drugs were just beginning to be a problem. Living was large and life was good. We were solidly ahead of the Russkies in the space race. American technocracy led the world. We were winning battles in Vietnam (only to be betrayed by politicians later). Overall, it was a magical time.
Guest Contributor – War Pig – 09SEP2024 – Finding Significance Redux
One of my favorites is Ahab’s soliloquy spoken by Gregoey Peck on the bridge of the Pequod.
I do not have the funds to make great changes. No political power, no influence except among family who respect my opinions. I believe there is too much money In politics already, so I do not contribute to political parties or candidates except for a cousin of mine who is a county trustee.
Instead, I offer the party or candidate something totally above price. My vote. It cannot be bought as I would not sell it for millions, therefore it is beyond value. I earned my franchise through blood, sweat and pain. It is priceless to me.
As for social media, I eschew it. My private life is mine and I do not care to share it with strangers. I also do not care about their lives so no reason to join social media. I don’t want to see pictures of their restaurant meals, etc. I find no attraction in trying to gain approval from strangers by amassing likes. There are a few for whom I care about their opinions. Mostly my close relatives and a very few brothers in arms.
We really need to lower our population back down to about 150 million. We’re beginning to act like an experimental overcrowded rat colony.
Tom’s World – 28AUG2024 – Statues – 5
I don’t know the story of this group of statues except that they depict typical young people from an earlier era and are located in the common area of a downtown Pensacola residential area.
Admiral John Towers, Naval Aviator number 3. In 1914, then Lt. Towers was ordered to Pensacola to create the first training program for Naval Aviators.
Obviously a Photoshop composite. This combines heavily modified elements of a bronze statue from the US Naval Air Museum and a scene from St. Michael’s Cemetery in Pensacola. St. Michaels contains graves from the 1700’s when Florida was a Spanish colony.
Closeup of the Confederate Memorial Monument located in Arlington National Cemetery. I recently read that the storm clouds were gathering around this monument for it’s removal as, I suppose, a National disgrace.
Tom’s World – 28AUG2024 – Statues – 4
Taken on a drizzly early spring day in Atlanta’s Westview Cemetery. This cemetery along with Oakland Cemetery about 3 miles east combined have so many fantastic photo subjects as to be a visual banquet. I can (and have) spent cumulative weeks just trying to see everything.
No intro necessary for this one except it’s the real one. I get up the DC area every few years to visit my parents grave sites in Arlington Nation and took this on one of the trips.
This amusing statue is located at the terminus of a bicycle trail in Alpharetta, Ga.
#19 Figurehead for the largest sailing vessel in current use, The Juan Sebastian De Alcano. Juan Sebastián de Elcano is a training ship of the Spanish Navy. It is a four-masted topsail, steel-hulled barquentine (schooner barque). At 113 metres (371 ft) long, it is the third-largest tall ship in the world, and is the sailing vessel that has sailed the furthest, covering more than 2,000,000 nautical miles (3,700,000 km; 2,300,000 mi) in its lifetime.
The JS De Alcano puts in to port in Pensacola for a visit every 4 years or so,
Guest Contributor – TomD – 27AUG2024 – Photo
Guest Contributor – TomD – 26AUG2024 – Photo – Military
In reply to MasterDiver.
This is a ”disappearing gun” emplacement dating from 130 years ago. It is was a coastal defense weapon.
Sure looks to be that the risings seas have flooded this emplacement out. There is a sea wall on base at NAS Pensacola that has been in place for about the same amount of time and contemporary pictures showing the seawall in the first decade of the 1900’s show no discernible difference from now in water levels.
Guest Contributor – TomD – 24AUG2024 – The Best Camera
A lot of my shots aren’t planned shoots, they’re targets of opportunity so to speak. I have 2 cameras; one, like yours is a Sony A7IV and a fair collection of large and expensive lenses. It’s great for planned shoots but is simply too big, too heavy and too expensive to have with me nearly always.
For close to the last 10 years, I’ve also had a camera from the Sony A6000 series (currently A6600). I tend to keep a Zeiss 16-70 f4.0 on it. They’re not exactly cheap but you can get a package 40% the size, 33% the weight, 40% of the cost and 95% of the capability of more upscale Sony (or any) cameras.
I know I’ve used the following analogy here before but when business and practical considerations forced me into concealed carry in downtown Atlanta, when over a 10-year period, I had to survey the structural conditions of old boarded up downtown buildings prior to renovation. Things got pretty scary on a number of occasions and I’m close to dead certain that having that pistol with me, despite never having even been cocked, saved my butt on several occasions.
The best pistol for concealed carry is the one you’re likely to have with you when needed.
The parallel is obvious.
The now-ubiquitous cell phone works for most people and even me on occasion. You can get good snapshots but photographs, no.
Here’s a photo of my version of a “concealed carry” camera. By that, I mean it will fit in a coat pocket or a console.
The lens is a f4.0 Zeiss 16-70 which, since the camera has an ASP-C sensor, is the equivalent of a 24-105 in a full frame camera. That’s mild wide angle to mild telephoto and is a pretty good and useful do everything lens. ASP-C lenses are very small compared to their 35mm counterparts.
This camera is probably 90%+ as capable as its much larger and more expensive cousins. Unless I was pushing in extreme conditions, I am unable to identify which camera shot which photo.
And though the margin is decreasing, in virtually all respects this camera is quite superior to phone cameras .
An analogy
