Wing Shots

My wife says I have enough wing shots.  She may be right.  It seems like every flight I’m on where the wing is visible and I’ve got a camera I snap a shot.  Sometimes even at night. This has been going on for years.

For whatever reason I love the image of those wings set against the background of the wild blue yonder. I love airplanes and I love to fly.

Of the two most dangerous things in the world they say one is a doctor piloting an airplane. I don’t do that.  My wife can but I’ve always had the wisdom to realize I would not be the sharpest tool in the drawer when it comes to the operation of an engine powered heavier than air flying machine.  I leave that job to others whose only concern is the operation of that type vehicle.

Native Americans long ago claimed that to take a photograph was to capture the soul of the thing.  Thus they long avoided the photographer’s lens.  It is one of the features of the work of Edward S. Curtis that makes his images so remarkable:  He was able to pose the Native American in full regalia and capture their images for posterity.  Some feel his bribery and trespass was tantamount to theft but he did preserve a somewhat authentic image of a great society fallen and about to disappear into the abyss of modern western industrial life.

My aim is not so high and my subjects neither endangered or noble.  But I do think I am trying to take a piece of that airplane, that flight, home with me.  I think I want that great wing cutting through the dark blue of flight at 6 miles high to become a part of me.  So, if you wouldn’t mind just leaning back a bit……