Reunion not with just one, but all three, posted on the move

Lavina's reunion with her sons also included Kalib and Lynxton, not just Jobe. So I decided I would try to get up another post before I left Anchorage and I would do it at stoplights. I might have succeeded too, but I was at only one stoplight for any length of time and there was some kind of police incident there, and since I photograph slices of life as I see from my car, I shot that with my "real" camera. Now I am in line at Taco Bell to get a snack before I go home so I am making my post from right here in this line.

Bubbles

What with the air show, the boys being here, the surprise visit of the Mormon missionaries, the quick trip to town and Instagram still being new to me, I went a little crazy yesterday. I think it is okay to go crazy on so rare a Saturday as yesterday was. I will not go so crazy today, but will conduct what for me will be a new Instagram experiment yet. I did not take this photo with my iPhone, but with my "real" camera, then I emailed it to myself and put it in Instagram. This, of course, defeats the quick and easy notion of using Instagram and iPhone together, but a lot of people do it and I wanted to see how it would turn out.

Just looking at it in the iPhone, there appears to have been a major color shift from what I saw on my screen in my computer and what I see here, the tones having gone much colder. And then I added the Instagram filter to change it even more. I will see how it looks on my computer once posted. Tonight, if I can find the time and I probably can because I want to, I will post the straight picture on my blog, plus a couple of other bubble pictures I took at the same time, and maybe a few other scenes that I have double photographed – with my iPhone specifically for Instagram and with my Canon 5D Mark III. It will be interesting to see the contrast. I will add a few extra comments and thoughts on the whole Instagram thing.

It's possible I may Instagram a post or two between now and then, but I'm not sure. I feel very Sunday-lazy, but I do have a lot of other things I really should do.

Airplanes and Mormons in one afternoon

It was a static airshow. The only times the planes flew were when they came in to land and when they took off and departed. We were only there for the take off and departure. As they watched the planes fly away, I wondered if my grandsons felt the same awe and magic I always did - and still do.

When we got back to the house, they had their grandmother get these toy planes out for them and then they made a runway and started to play. I had my answer. Then some Mormon missionaries showed up. As unreligious and, from their outlook, fallen, as I have become, I never turn them away. I used to be one, that's why. I know the trials they face.

I have been dabbling at a book made up of the pictures of Mormon missionaries I take wherever I happen to come across them, coupled with stories from my own mission. I already know which story I will match up with this picture. As they always do, they asked if there was anything they could do for us. They had already done it. They had placed themselves in my picture.

So there you have it, two facets of my complex and tortured heritage and history encountered and photographed in one single day – aviation and Mormons.

Airplanes, my dad, me, my wife and grandsons…

Can I tell you how much I love airplanes? I can't! I can't! You know already. Or you don't know. Nothing I can say can add to or subtract from your knowledge of the subject. But why? Why did I make that bad landing and put my airplane into the black spruce of Mentasta? When will I be able to get another? And what foolishness has overcome me that I would leave my Canon 5D Mark III hanging from my shoulder and shoot this rare instant with my iPhone? Just so I can Instagram it and post it quickly to my blog? One frame shot in the time I could've got off eight? Seven megapixels when I could have had 20? A flimsy, shallow, JPEG when I could've had a deep, resonant, CR2 RAW? I will probably regret it – no I already do regret it – but either way, these boys will know what their great-grandpa did.

The plane their great grandfather learn to fly in

Here my grandsons are, just moments ago with my wife, alongside the airplane my dad learned to fly in. Well, not this exact plane I am sure but the make and model. In preparation to go out and fight a war. Goddamn I'm choking up and getting all teary-eyed just thinking about it.