Looking Up: Notes from Bill Bourbonnais

It's actually been kind of nice finding some things to do that doesn't involve "Looking down" at a mini-screen micro-computer smart phone device. Honestly, trolling and scrolling is deceivingly and deliberately addictive, and a hard habit to break. But as my profile intro says, I love to learn and often find rabbit holes you wouldn't expect. So sometimes looking up to learn more involves looking down. So welcome to my trolling and scrolling for today. Here's a little trivia for your Saturday. SNAKES! I've been fascinanted with snakes since I was a kid in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. Helping mom plant some flowers in the front of the house, I remember seeing some garter snakes quickly slithering out of the planters to get away from us. Growing up in San Diego, we had a lot of reptiles around - mostly California King Snakes, truly beautiful snakes. Quite a few alligator lizards as well. A right of passage growing up on the canyons of the Clairemont neighborhood ...

So I'm starting to get (re)hooked on photography and now I'm getting hooked on aviation since that quick trip to the RDU Observation Deck. (Gotta hand it to Zuckerberg and the Facebook algorithm - my feed has been filled with FlightRadar24 posts, squawk channel posts, and videos of various jets, landings-good and not so good, and local air shows.)   But on this outing, Mijo took a red-eye back from his California summer gig, so I took the opportunity to have some play time during extension season. Still rusty, and need to tighten up the shots, but I think the 75-300mm zoom worked a bit better than the 18-55mm I used last time. Simple crops, no edits. And a screen capture of the FlightRadar24 replay of his Frontier Airbus 320 coming into 23R at RDU. This outing was double extra fun - some more photo work, and the youngling returning home after a 10 week stint in the California Sierra Nevada. To my pilot and aviation fan friends - what got you hooked? What keeps you hooked?

Today I took a fun, quick afternoon trip with Laura. Honestly, it's been far too long since I've wandered out with any kind of camera other than my cell phone. It was nice to get out and play but I'm pretty rusty.  But rust starts to fall off with repeated excercise and use. I also grabbed the wrong lens for a trip to the RDU Airport Observation Park deck. Note to self - grab all the gear. But don't let lack of ideal gear slow you down. There will be more outings. Lesson for the day - I've missed taking an actual camera out for excercise. Camera: Canon EOS Rebel XS w/18mm-55mm zoom. Next time I'm bringing the 17mm-300mm zoom instead. 😁