I’ve passed little San Martin airfield many times on my way south and heard a rumour years ago that there’s an air museum in there somewhere. Today I took a detour and found it. It was a pleasantly relaxing way to spend a couple of hours. The Wings of History Air Museum has two hangars of vintage planes and a few other planes in the yard outside.

A docent kindly gave me a personal tour (well, I was the only visitor at that point), and then I wandered around scouting for good photo ops. I only had my 135mm lens with me, so I had to be creative.

This small Beechcraft training plane was made in the year I was born.

I sat in the cockpit of the 1956 British Vickers Viscount. It was small, with switches and dials everywhere. It’s easy to see why pilots have to train a lot. If they need to react quickly, their hands have to rely on muscle memory to flip the right switches and their brains must automatically know which dials to pay attention to. I just had to deal with the dappled, low intensity light coming in through the windows. Without a tripod, I had to make some compromises.

The museum houses the only wooden propeller shop west of the Mississippi. The propellers are handmade according to the requirements of the vintage plane owners that commission them. Glue-laminated blocks of birch and maple make a strong and stable starting point from which the craftspeople mill the propeller shapes.

The propellers are balanced by glueing weights into drilled holes, and the leading edges are optionally reinforced with metal and other materials.

Shortly after it was time to leave the museum, the sun decided to put on a pretty show, giving a warm glow to the dry grassy hillsides that are common to this area. It capped off a nice, quiet afternoon pottering around a new place.

Okuizome is an ancient Japanese ritual that celebrates 100 days of life and brings luck for the future. The celebration is centered around particular foods served on lacquer dishes with tall feet. Friends and family pretend to give the infant foods in a certain order. The meal consists of a whole fish, soup, steamed rice with adzuki beans, and three side dishes. The side dishes traditionally include a plum, a pickled dish, and a simmered dish. The meal also includes a hard ‘stone’ to ensure good teeth. We used a chestnut in place of a stone.

Kaori worked hard for several days to prepare the decorations, make some of the food, and order the fish and cake. Tomo-chan made the traditional dishes. Buying all the right foods and cooking them in the proper way was a lot to do and we are very grateful for her help. Kaori’s close group of friends with the usual dogs and husbands came over. And our neighbors Scott and Laurie stopped by to bear witness. It was a lively, fun party and we think Louie enjoyed it. He’s pretty tired out now!

Louie needs a passport photo and I thought I could take a better one than a passport photo shop. Here the winner…

The requirements were closed mouth, both ears showing, chin showing, eyes open, a white background and a specific size.

Some nice moments at Barefoot Cafe today. Experimenting with tinting in Photoshop.

My sister-in-law challenged me to one black and white photo of daily life for a week. No people. No explanation. All photos taken the same day.

Day 7

I was under the weather on Day 7 so chose a different photo from my shoot on Day 6.

Day 6

Day 5

Day 4

Day 3

Day 2

Day 1

A retrospective

I think my images got stronger through the week. My first image works well in color but looks muddied in black and white. For good black-and-white photos, you really need strong contrast and a strong subject. My second image doesn’t have enough contrast for me. I tried to convey one aspect of my life, and used backlighting to try to make it interesting, but in the end I don’t think it worked that well. It’s semi-interesting, but I miss the deep blacks. I love the Day 3 image. I used a Tri-X filter to create a classic, gritty black-and-white look.

I like the Day 4 photo also. It was late in the evening and I needed to find something at home to photograph. I got the idea of using hard light to create a dramatic effect on my model head. I used an undiffused main light and a diffused fill light.

Pleased I am with the Day 5 photo. I remembered a YouTube video from DigitalRevTV where the team covered ideas for shooting indoors on a rainy day. One idea was to use little model people. So I bought some construction workers from our local model railway shop, downloaded a stock photo of a road, and had some fun with my macro lens. For Days 6 and 7, I pulled photos from my visit to the San Martin air museum that I thought would work well in black and white. Good contrast with a strong subject that doesn’t rely on color for it to be understood.

Overall, I don’t think there are any World-class images there, but they hold their own for shots that didn’t take a lot of planning and setup.