Fly Away

I’m fascinated by airplanes. It may be because I  love to travel, to fly away to someplace special, or it may be because it’s amazing how something so big and heavy can get off the ground. I don’t get to fly away very often, but I can visit the Boeing Museum of Flight by just driving to south Seattle, like Tanya and I went did week.

I hadn’t been in years, and it is bigger than I remember. The museum has five main exhibition areas:

• the Great Gallery, a 6-story exhibition hall which contains 39 full-size aircraft
• the Red Barn, the original Boeing building which features the Boeing story from 1916 to 1958
• the Personal Courage Wing, which present the story of fighter aviation in World War I and II
• the Space Gallery, which will soon house one of NASA’s space shuttle trainers, and
• the Airpark, an outside area with 6 large planes, including the Kennedy/Johnson Air Force One, the very first 747, and a Concorde

It’s a bit of challenge to photograph there. The contrast can be extreme, especially in the Great Gallery with it glass walls. But tripods are allowed, so I made use of HDR to handle the contrast on many shots (such as the featured image above, which shows the world’s sole remaining Boeing 80A-1 in the foreground and a DC3 above it – back in my college days, I rode several times in DC3s in Alaska). It’s a fun spot, well worth visiting. The museum does charge an admission fee, but is free on the first Thursday evening of each month.