Trains*, planes and automobiles...

..aka My town- part 3:
the airport

*no trains though.. we could just supplement that with water bottles :D

My friend and I spent a couple very hot hours by this stretch of road.


The airport?, on the right there.. in the distance.. we were behind a tall fence on a hill, right next to the runway..

My friend is a plane spotter. That means she photographs airplanes: airlines, airplane types and particular planes. Now while I'm not all that interested in that side, it gave me a great excuse to bust out my zoom for a change.

Hey, here comes one!

There is a great viewpoint on that hill...
While we waited for planes we chatted, drank loads of water.. it was a really sweltering day.
There was also the action at the DHL headquarters on our left.

After the two hours I had made up my mind about this being the ugliest building I had ever seen...

But luckily there were plenty of airplanes to distract me from the monstrosity.

Multitasking... ;)

It was hot at the start of the runway as well..

I enjoyed catching the hot air from the motor thrust at take off.

Our snack cookies were pretty much melted..

It was great watching my friend getting all excited about a plane, this one a Finnair cargo plane.

We also talked about the change from Finnair's old logo and coloring:

..to the new one. We much prefer the clean lines of the new one:

Without the occasional cloud and the breeze, I swear we would have shriveled up like raisins...

My favorite shots?

These two of the KLM flight.
Again the jet thrust shows up nicely and I like the clouds on the background on the second one.

Why were we there so long as we were obviously suffering from the heat? For this plane.

I had one happy friend.

And while I'm not going to turn into a plane spotter, I did promise to go again.. this time another spot and at nigh time to catch the lights..

Now the airport is just a 15 minute drive from my house, so it wasn't too much of an effort. And I highly recommend trying it out, because when shooting on manual an opportunity like this makes you learn to make quick adjustments on you settings. Your local plane spotters would have the best viewpoint info online.

Just one word of advice.. maybe go on a cool day :D