Guided By The Beauty Of Our Weapons
Like everyone else, I got a few good snaps of the Blue Angels doing their Fleet Week Thing right in front of our San Francisco office the other day (but even though I’m a general aviation pilot with some aerobatics training, I made an endless series of beginner’s errors). This is the shot I like the best — it’s kinda conveys the movement, the excitement, and the sheer discipline needed to fly like this.
But nothing conveys the sound of an F/A-18 going straight over you maybe a thousand feet up as you stand on the balcony watching. If you’ve ever been in the remoter parts of the California or Nevada deserts, you’ll know this sound first hand, but it’s even more intense in an urban setting. And chilling, too, in its own way, if you’ve got any sort of imagination.
And it brought back a sharp memory: a million years ago I was walking along Balls Pond Road in Dalston on some errand or other in a typically-grey London day when a low-flying military jet suddenly shrieked overhead, and in the wake of the overwhelming echoing dopplered noise I looked up and had a stark black-and-white premonition of nuclear disaster and devastation in the peeling shabby half-broken walls and windows rising around me. The opposite of a spiritual vision, I guess. Having just seen Tarkovsky’s “The Sacrifice” back then probably didn’t help. Nearly thirty years later reliving that moment can still bring me up short. It’s difficult for me to not imagine the terror of being the target of planes like this; it’s hard for me to fathom people not also imagining this, but that’s par for the course, I guess — for so many people it’s just aesthetics, just a thrill. Or just a nuisance.
And it makes me a little self-conscious at times using the word “shot” and “shoot” to describe my photos.
