Seattle Times article on Blue Angels photo shoot

[mcoomer]

Short article on shooting the Blues and Oracle stunt plane. Times staff photographer shot with a 1D MkII and two 7D's. I work at Boeing and these guys are parked right outside my office window at the Military Flight Center (sorry, no cameras allowed on property) so we are treated to their comings and goings every year during Seafair.

Seattle Times

Mike

[rick_reno]

Wow Mike, those are amazing shots. I really like the one where the BA pilot appears to be looking at you.

[mcoomer]

To be clear...these aren't my photos. I work for Boeing and simply stumbled across the article. I'd do it in a hearbeat though.

[PhotosGuy]

That was interesting, but I have to move it to "T. Talk."

[FlyingPhotog]

Nice to see where a "Staffer" didn't screw the pooch completely...

This isn't the kind of thing your average newser gets to shoot on a regular basis. Usually you get tack sharp photos with completely frozen props.

[mcoomer]

Originally Posted by PhotosGuy

That was interesting, but I have to move it to "T. Talk."

Sorry, still kind of new here and didn't realize I'd stuck it in the wrong forum.

Mike

[ChunkyDA]

Now there's something to talk about. Something looks totally wrong with that first Greg Gilbert shot. Like the blues were chopped into the shot of the inverted biplane. Leading edge slats, AoA, mismatched for different airspeeds (have a look at #5 of 28 in the newspaper gallery for proper F-18 configuration at low speed). The turn angles, all wrong. Even the grain pattern in the blues does not match the red biplane. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABP...2018836700.jpg If the Blues blazed through there at higher speed they should be blurred. Not to mention this would be a VERY dissimilar close formation, and unlikely to be approved. My watch is high in the air to save it from the rising BS.
Anybody else?

[FlyingPhotog]

I see full flaps and slats on the Hornets.

If Sean goes bawls to the wall, their speeds won't be that dissimilar.

It all looks legit to me. I know they do these types of flights often.

[jwol]

I see no reason to believe any of these are photoshopped. Carrier landing speed for the Hornet is right around 135 knots at approach alpha. Put another couple units alpha in and you can propably get down to ~125 especially in the clean configuration the Blues fly in. In that first shot, the Blues are alot further away from Sean than they appear. The F-18 is a much larger aircraft than the Oracle Challenger. They are not co-airspeed, the Blues are passing Sean.

Photo #5 in the gallery shows the Blues performing a high alpha pass. In that photo, they are not co-airspeed, Sean is passing the Blues. With a bit of a head wind the Blues can get down to ~90 knots in the high alpha pass.

And like Jay said, they do these flights fairly often.