Photography from a plane Archives - Laughing Frog Images

When I fly, I tend to get a an aisle seat. I’m not always sure why, because my head and arms are regularly hit with nary a tinge of guilt on the part of those striking me.

However, I might want to start rethinking that.

When I replaced my old cell phone from the Dark Ages (it was a flip phone with no keyboard…) with a new smartphone, I chose the camera first, and then the phone. I wanted a Windows phone so I could manage this site in Internet Explorer, so that somewhat narrowed my choices, but they weren’t bad choices. I ended up with the Lumia Icon, which has a 20mp camera, and also produces a RAW image in .dng format. It takes phone photography to a new level that I won’t get into here, because this isn’t about a phone or a camera – it’s about a snapshot in time memorialized in bytes.

More importantly, the Icon gives me the opportunity to capture some fantastic images without having to carry a camera with me all of the time.

Here’s a shot from a window seat in the back of a Southwest Boeing 737. We’re heading east over Huntington Beach at sunset. As we turned east, I noticed the sunset and thought “there might be a picture here…”

You can see ships waiting to get in to Long Beach Harbor in silhouette from the setting sun, you can see the waves headed towards the beach, the blue sky and darkness separated by the rain clouds. There’s a lot going on here.

This is the jpeg file straight from the camera. I haven’t played around with the dng file to what I might be able to do with it. I didn’t have time to go to manual and select the settings as I would try to do for a sunset – so I metered off of the clouds above the sun and hoped for the best. ISO 64, f2.8, 1/1250 second – all set by the Icon’s camera.

I ended up with a quality image of something fresh and different, and that’s what makes time behind the camera meaningful.

Shoot often and shoot well!

As a significant part of the U.S. continues to be hammered by snow and cold, many of us don’t think about ice covering the Great Lakes and connecting rivers. It does happen.

This hasn’t been a good year for the lakes or the lake boats. You can check out Boatnerd.com if you’re curious about what’s been happening on the North Coast.

In early April of 2014, I flew from New York’s La Guardia airport to O’Hare in Chicago, and had a window seat.

As we were nearing Buffalo, NY, the pilot made an announcement about much of Lake Erie being frozen over, and that we could see it from the right side of the plane. As luck would have it, I was on the “right” side for a change!

What you’re seeing in this phone photo is Lake Erie in the foreground, and Lake Ontario in the background. All that gray/white stuff in the center/left-center is in fact ice on Lake Erie! You’ll see a squiggly gray line that splits in two and then rejoins itself toward the top right – that’s the Niagara River leading toward Niagara Falls. Fort Erie and the Niagara Region of southeastern Ontario to the left of that, Buffalo NY and its’ suburbs and surroundings are to the right and in the lower foreground. And, that’s dirt on the window in the very foreground as the sun sets to the west…

Something different to share and talk about is always nice. This is certainly different, and something that most of us have probably never thought about or heard about.

This image will never make it to the galleries on Laughing Frog Images – I know that.

But, sometimes a picture, regardless of the technical and aesthetic quality, is well worth sharing because of the thoughts, wonderings, and conversations it brings about. This is one of those times.

Thanks for visiting.

Sunset from the back of a plane

Looking down at a frozen Lake Erie

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