From the Sky

About eight years or so ago I began having to fly a lot for work. No crazy oversees flights or bouncing back from coast to coast a couple of times a week like many of the people I came to meet and then run into frequently on planes and in various airports. My jaunts were mostly up and down the West Coast, to the Midwest a couple of times each winter, and over the Pacific to Hawaii. If you’ve never done it, it’s truly a grind. But as said, I always met people who flew a lot more often and covered much more distance than me, so even though I felt it was taxing, I also thought, like so many other things in life, it could have been much worse.


Anyway, when I started to fly a lot, I told myself I might as well start snapping photos out the plane window. Not so much to memorialize my travels as just to satiate the multi-tasking fidget who lives inside of me, and perhaps take the edge off of flying so much. I figured I’d have lots of photo ops up there at 30,000 feet, so I gave myself the order… point the lens against the glass, start pushing the shutter button, and see what you get. Thousands (tens of thousands?) of photos later, here are a few that came out decent. If anyone is interested, maybe next time I’ll include a few tips… things I learned about shooting through the window of a plane down at a world that seems remarkably less chaotic than it feels when on the ground.


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Flying west, passing another plane flying east, dwarfed by clouds


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The Grand Canyon (the only time I’ve ever seen or experienced it)


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Landing in Phoenix, Arizona


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Boathouses in Portland, Oregon


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Rice fields in Sacramento, California


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Landing at dusk in San Diego, California, buzzing uncomfortably close to the city’s skyline


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Wildfire south of Sacramento, California


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Harbor Island and San Diego Bay in the foreground, North Island, Coronado runway in the middle, and Mexico’s Coronado Islands on the horizon


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Over Phoenix, Arizona


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Kauai, Hawaii


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Rocky Mountains in July


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Looking west from Log Beach, California


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Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay


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Yosemite National Park and Half Dome


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Mount Hood, Oregon


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Shelter Island and San Diego Bay with an aircraft carrier heading out the mouth


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Crater Lake National Park, Oregon


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Newark, New Jersey shipping containers with New York City skyline in background


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Coronado Bridge, downtown San Diego, Balboa Park and San Diego Bay


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Manmade Mission Bay, San Diego, California


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Elizabeth, New Jersey


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Ticky-tack neighborhood, Phoenix, Arizona


 


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Published on February 04, 2016 20:42
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