Idaho Airships, Inc.

This is a great project for me-I spent 14 years of my life in Air Traffic Control (terminal and enroute), and just yesterday was interviewed by our Fox affiliate, KTRV Channel 12, about an aviation topic in front of this subject.

But…I’m old and get up early, so I was asleep by the time the interview played on the 9:00pm news.

Nonetheless, this is a wonderful project to photograph from the air because of its extremes. One of the challenges is that it’s extremely close to a military installation-and they have guns. It’s also very close to the main runways at Gowen Field, and they have large jets that leave something called wake turbulence…which is good in a sense because if you hit a large jet’s wake it means that you missed the jet itself. Mixed blessing.

Another extreme is the shape of the project…it’s very tall and thin, so that it throws an odd shadow and catches light when everything else around it is in shadow. I’m getting ready to do a sunset shoot of it…shooting it at an angle so that the sun is setting in full color right on top of the tower. That’s not easy.

Here are a few images from the progression series:

4/11/08-The project was just getting off the ground…so to speak.

5/15/08-The intent was obvious, and things were getting serious-especially for an acrophobic like me (I am-true!).

By 9/15/08 things were getting pretty tall-it was visible from all over Boise and Meridian, and parts of Eagle.

On February 18, 2009 I went up late to do some dusk/sunset work and got this image of the tower lit by the sun with it’s entire context in shadow.

These types of projects can be tremendous fun if you can stand the tight turns with a long lens.

L