COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado – When I saw earlier this year that I could photograph the United States Navy’s Blue Angels and the Air Force’s Thunderbirds on two consecutive weekends, I knew I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
I had photographed the Blue Angels at the Lincoln Airshow last year, but was still building my personal collection of cameras and lenses.
I filmed the Blue Angels performance essentially with the body of my mother’s point-and-shoot camera and a 300mm lens that I bought from a former colleague who was probably older than me.
Of course, this wasn’t the optimal setting for photographing planes flying at just under Mach 1. I still came home with decent photos, but I knew that with better equipment I could have done a lot more.
Keyword: Christmas 2023.
I must have complained to my family enough times about not having the 600mm zoom lens I used in my previous job, and then I started to feel a little suspicious that no one had asked me for Christmas gift ideas.
Well, I was close to tears when I opened the package that had my name on it because hidden inside the wrapping paper was a brand new Sigma 150-600mm zoom lens.
My brother Jordan and my partner Emaly had planned the gift without my knowledge and my whole family had contributed to giving me the lens.
Since I no longer had to afford the lens myself, I immediately bought a Canon 7D Mark II, a powerful DSLR camera that I had used for action shots in my previous job as a newspaper reporter.
Now that I had the equipment needed to properly film an air show, I decided to check out the Blue Angels’ schedule, thinking they wouldn’t be around.
However, I saw that they would be the headline act at the Pike Peak Regional Airshow, which happened to be held a week before the USAF Thunderbirds participated in the first air show in several years at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha.
With the stars seemingly aligned, I planned a weekend getaway to Colorado Springs with Emaly and was ready to put my new gear to the test.
After spending the previous day riding the cog railway to the 46,000-foot summit of Pikes Peak, I arrived at the Colorado Springs airfield ready to get to work.
One item on my bucket list was to photograph an F-22 Raptor, the US Air Force’s fifth-generation stealth fighter. I had not yet seen the aircraft in person and a full demonstration of the Raptor was on the agenda.
I swear there is no bad angle to photograph the Raptor because it is curved to reduce radar returns. I got a dream shot of the fighter as it flew by at high speed on its side with the pilot looking our way.
The Raptor was later joined by a P-38 Lightning, a twin-engine fighter jet from World War II, for a historic flight that has become very popular at air shows.
I had to laugh to myself as I thought about the poor old P-38’s throttle being blocked by a firewall while the F-22 in its formation was about to stall.
Later there was a demonstration of an EA-18 Growler, a US Navy aircraft, which was later joined by an F4U Corsair, my favorite WWII-era aircraft.
The Corsair had distinctive curved wings, not for aerodynamic reasons, but to ensure that the huge propellers did not touch the ground while the aircraft was on the ground.
At a fighter parade featuring more World War II fighter aircraft, I wished my late maternal grandfather, Tom Renken, could be with me to see the P-51 Mustang that was part of the rotation.
The Mustang was his favorite World War II fighter and we constantly teased each other about which fighter, the Mustang or the Corsair, was really the fastest fighter of the war.
My interest in military aviation dates back to him and to several books full of aircraft diagrams that I read through whenever I visited my grandparents at their house.
I also cannot forget my late paternal grandfather, Lester Neben, who was a pilot himself and took us out several times in a Piper Cub that belonged to him.
I remember marveling as a child at how different the pastures and farmland north of Lexington looked in the air.
Lester, his second wife Janet, and his sister Bev “Birdy” Schneidereit were killed on June 3, 2001, when the plane he was flying crashed in a pasture near Lyons, Colorado, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
“The plane actually tipped over and the wing hit the hill. It almost rolled over, but not quite,” witnesses to the crash told authorities.
I was only seven years old at the time of the fatal accident, and you might think that losing family members in a plane crash might dampen my attitude toward air travel.
On the contrary, I would get up and fly in a small plane at any time today, especially not with a camera.
At the air show, there was a heavily modified Piper airplane performing flying tricks, and I thought taking photos of it and the Mustang was a fitting way to honor both of my grandfathers.
The headliner of the show was the US Navy’s Blue Angels, flying Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornets painted in the distinctive colors of blue and yellow.
I was glad I had seen their show the year before in Lincoln because I had a good idea of what formations they would fly in.
There is a four-ship formation of Blue Angels one through four, followed by a two-ship formation of types five and six. At the end of the show, the formations were combined into a six-ship unit.
One of the classic tricks at air shows is the “sneak pass,” where the other planes attract the attention of the crowd while a single plane sneaks away and then flies over the crowd at a low altitude.
If you are not prepared for this, it will be quite a shock.
After seeing it once, I was almost prepared for it. I saw the four-ship formation and then #5 Blue Angel in front of the flight line.
I was just wondering where #6 had gone when they came screaming over us from the direction of the mountains, setting off car alarms.
One shot I was incredibly proud of was when #5 was circling the airport with Pikes Peak in the background. Suddenly I saw a photo opportunity, turned my lens around and got a perfect shot of #5 just below the peak of the mountain.
When I looked at the photos later in the hotel, I was overjoyed. The 600mm lens made me feel like I was in the middle of the action and the 7D Mark II’s autofocus worked overtime. I only missed focus on two or three shots.
And as if that wasn’t all I experienced that day, as I was standing on the hotel balcony taking photos of the rising full moon, a Southwest Airlines flight flew past the lunar surface and I managed to get a once-in-a-lifetime shot.
The USAF Thunderbirds show this weekend is another great opportunity to test myself as a photographer.
