Attended Miramar Airshow
Went to Del Mar to shoot the sunset
Drank tequila until I threw up
Went to a pancake breakfast and fire station open house
Installed a siren/PA in my truck
Drank about a liter of Jager Meister
Hosted a meeting of strobist style photographers with 3 location shoots
Shot product for pleasurefoundry.com
Shot a new model named Mia
WHEW!!
In all that, I did manage to squeeze some excitement into my life. After about 6 hours of sleep, I sprang out of bed Friday morning at 7:30am to finish getting ready to drive to San Diego for the 2007 Miramar Air Show. Jim and kallahar showed up around 9:30 and we rolled out to put 30$ worth of gas into my truck and stock up on bean and cheese burritos from taco bell (I love it!), then off we went! My truck is still holding up great, no problems to report on the long drive. The trip down went pretty fast with the exception of one accident that was kinda crazy, it was in the opposite direction that we were going but on the center divider so we got a pretty good look at it. The first car we saw had nothing under the front of it, no wheels, no axle, no nothing, it was all just gone, the next car was several hundred yards behind it too! We never did see the wheels or axle, no idea where they ended up. The other car involved was pretty badly banged up but we could see clearly they paramedics putting their gear on the stretcher to wheel back to the ambulance so doesn't look like anybody was too badly hurt.
The rest of the trip was smooth sailing and we ended up at the west gate around 11am, the guard stopped us and asked us if we all had seat belts on and waved us through the gate, I made it about 200 feet before I was flagged for "random vehicle inspection." Now to be fair, the 30 minutes I spent with marine MP's tossing my truck they did pull two other vehicles into the inspection area and I believe they were chosen at random, THAT said, theres a ZERO percent chance *I* was chosen at random! I pulled into the inspection area and immediately, before I even came to a stop, several marines approached my truck to admire my bumper and grill. One of them shouted through my passenger window, "thats a goal post right!? Is that a goal post?! It is right?!" I'm pretty sure he had a bet going, he lost but it was funny any way. The MP with the gun came over and said, "can you please turn your truck off, put the keys on the dash, give me your license, open all the doors, the tail gate and the hood and step away please." Oh boy! Fortunately, I went through my truck before we left and removed a few choice items that I thought would be bad to have on a marine base! While my truck was being searched by half of the marines, the other half admired my truck, it was very amusing! The search was very casual and mostly just a visual look-see at all the crazy shit in my truck, until they found my cold steel Magnum Kukri Machete. Aparently, machetes are no-go on base! They told me I could let them confiscate it or I could leave base with it and ditch it before coming back in, their words btw, not mine. I said it was fine for them to keep it, they told me I was cleared to enter the base, I closed my tailgate and my hood and was heading for my door when one of the MP's noticed the ammo box behind the drivers seat, CRAP, I'd forgotten about that! There were a few boxes of 12 gauge and a box of .45 He says, "uhhhm, we've got some ammo here..." The MP with the gun came over and said, "since we have the ammo and the machete, we're going to have to dig deeper and I'm going to have to call this in, please take a seat on the bench..." Ok well, I figured this was fair, I'm pretty sure I could have declined to have them search my stuff and they would have just sent me off base, I also was 99% sure I didn't have anything else in my truck worth mentioning. So I sat there while they went through my truck THOROUGHLY. They went through the backpacks, the camera bags, I carry all my camping gear, some generic shooting gear and cleaning supplies for my guns, tools, parts etc so there was a lot to go through. During this time I was still talking to the marines about my truck, I told them my ex girlfriend welded the bumper out of crash posts and how the chain link grill was to keep hondas out of my radiator etc.
So FINALLY, after about 30 minutes of searching, the MP with the gun comes over and says, I'm quoting this cause it's exactly what he said, "Ok, I can see you're not a bad guy, you clearly spend a lot of time camping, hunting and doing photography (I didn't argue the hunting point). I talked to my CO and he says we don't want to confiscate the machete but the ammo is fine." Huh?! I ask for clarification and he explains that I can bring my ammo on base but for some reason they want me to leave with the machete and come back with out it. He even suggests a good place to stash it in some bushes outside the base! I'm confused by this but I happily agree, cross the street and enter a business park, I toss the machete under some bushes, turned around and pulled up to the guard shack. The MP with the gun walked out to meet me there and said, "you didn't trade the machete for a gun did you?" I told him I didn't and they waved me through without even a quick check to make sure I'd gotten rid of the machete! In the long run, seemed a little ineffective but the whole process was amusing and in the end I was on the base heading to the show.
As I pulled away from the guard shack I noticed all of the marines standing there waving to me and giving me a thumbs up, apparently I'd made an impression. My impression didn't stop there, it's about 4 miles from the gate to the parking lot and all along the way there are marines directing traffic, 90% of them waved at me, gave me the thumbs up or shouted something like, "fuck yeah dude!!" I felt like I was in a parade! The ones with radios were clearly talking about me and calling ahead, if there was a car show that day, I'd have won it. So much for slipping in under the radar.
Sadly, this is where the air show excitement really ended. I was excited about trying to shoot an air show but it proved to be much harder than I'd expected. Shots of airplanes in blue skies not mater how amazing the performance are just airplanes in blue skies:
I tried very hard to make the shots interesting by including some people in them:
Let me tell you one thing.. Taking pictures of things moving at 500mph is HARD. Trying to get them framed in with a bunch of people milling about is CRAZY HARD. those planes don't fly in predictable places and it's hard to find a place in a crowd to swing a giant lens around and not clobber somebodies bud light. I did end up with a few pictures that came out nicely:
I decided that the interesting shots really weren't going to be in the sky but on the ground so me and Jim explored the stuff on the ground and found some really nice stuff to check out.
A very shiny old plane:
A GIANT chopper:
A really massive airplane:
See all of the pictures here at 23b.org
Like I said, the excitement was over, we were tired from being in the sun and on our feet all day. After the thunderbirds the crowd really started to thin out and people were heading for their cars, HA, joke was on them! We heard over the radio that there was a lock-down of all cars on the base for 45 minutes after the thunderbirds landed! There was a massive traffic jam with all the cars trying to get out early and then stopped on the road and made to wait. We took advantage of that time to wander around which was great since there were hardly any other people. Finally, they let the cars go and the MPs kicked us (and everybody else) out, we headed to my truck and left the base, the only excitement left was the marines waving and giving me the thumbs up on the way out.
For the record, I retrieved my machete from under the bush before leaving.
Part 2 of this post has sunsets in it!
No comments:
Post a Comment