F16's

Click the pics quick, because of the speed they fly, they disappear in the blink of an eye.

This is what an F-16 looks like to my eyes as its flying over. But with a lot of help from a telephoto lens I can sometimes get a picture I'm not embarrassed to show... On the other hand, I've shown a lot of embarrassing pictures on my blog, so I guess I shouldn't worry about it.

One of the things I like about boondocking at Ajo is watching Air Force fighter jets flying to the various bombing ranges in the area. I see mostly F-16s and A-10 Warthog's that are stationed in Tucson and occasionally F-22's out of Yuma.

When the planes are flying around me, they're usually pretty high in the air and sometimes far away so they don't disturb the residence of Ajo. But sometimes, I get lucky enough to get a decent picture of them doing what they do. I use the term lucky because they're traveling hundreds of miles an hour, and they travel way ahead of their sound, so by the time I hear them, they're often gone, so there's more luck involved in getting a photo than skill.

Since they're far away and not very big, by the time I see them with my eyes and then find them in the camera lens, there often really far away. But sometimes I get it to work out, but as I say, it's usually just luck.

I use a Canon 100-400mm telephoto lens, and that's usually a pretty good balance between getting close enough to see what kind of airplane it is and finding it with the lens's very narrow field of view. Unfortunately, most of my planes are lost simply because I couldn't find them in the camera lens, and when I do find them, they're traveling so fast I can't keep them there long enough for the camera to focus. I've been taking pictures of these planes since I got back to Ajo, and these are all the pictures that I've come up with.

One thing is for sure, taking a picture of these jets every once in a while makes it easy to take a picture of a Sandhill Crane flying by.

Theboondork