12/28/09
My apologies:
any movement is blurred in these 1/2 second exposures.
I’m making do with the G11,
but this far surpasses what the G10 could have done.
Category: CARGO’S LAST STAND Page 7 of 11
Tech Note: yet another color temp example
When the photo is adjusted for the Taylor’s seemingly ‘white’ lights, then the snow looks deep yellow, lit by the yellowish outside lights.
12/28/09
The Taylor brings a 20-foot stack, loaded with comat
(company material) to the loader I’m operating.
One of these 20-footers, I had to spin 180°.
.
Cesar wields the pry-bar
while another van awaits in the doorway
12/28/09
Cesar, load-sheet hanging out of his mouth,
muscles the stuck pallet down the rail.
Every lead has his style.
Ed H. (recently retired NWA main-deck veteran) was famous for saying:
“Get me the bar.”
Often, working the main deck is not just about moving switches and setting locks.
There’s pushing, pulling and prying, pulling pallets with pallets, etc..
Cesar is brilliant, knowing almost instantly the best way to to get ‘er done.
Blurred in this 1/2 second exposure,
I’m not big on using the G11’s tiny flash.
Tech Note: Another good color temperature example
The plane isn’t green. But it is lit by the yellowish outdoor lights which have a completely different color temp than the plane’s interior lights. I’ve set the color temp so the van and the inside of the plane would be white, and the plane’s white skin then becomes green.
12/28/09 – Cargo’s Last Stand – 7:14 am
The mostly comat load now begins in the aft
with one of our vans on a 20-footer
I rapidly departed the loader to get this shot sequence
of the last NWA freighter shutting its nose in Anchorage.
.
.
.
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12/28/09 – Cargo’s Last Stand – 7:07 am
: )
12/28/09 – Cargo’s Last Stand – 7:06 am
Steve gets the honor of shutting the nose for the last time
— as I jump off the loader to shoot The Last Smile.
: (
12/27/09
Darth II lost his left nostril in a fight
.
Christmas Day
Keanu Reeves (James) doing the impossible
12/25/09
F-2
12/25/09
Chilean Wine
12/24/09
The Church in the Sky
12/24/09
Main Deck
Looking forward from the rear
12/24/09
Main Deck
12/22/09
James, Steve, Bob ‘Pineapple,’ Lynn, Ken
12/17/09
Sprayed with air during deicing
under the F-7 lights
12/17/09
Deicing steam engulfs ship 39
under F-7’s tungsten lights
12/21/09 – 9 am – F-7 (facing south)
Waiting
to hear “clear to push” from the captain
.
Lynn waits
for the headset-disconnect signal
during engine-start
on what was my last push
12/21/09
Main Deck – N2, load-sheets in hand:
Dioni and Lynn
The Bulk
Our equivalent to the Russian Front
12/27/09
The Bulk — Uphill View —
where the very back of the aircraft radically slopes up
so it won’t hit the runway during rotation on take-off
Area 51 (compartment 51) is on the right
From this super wide-angle view, the ceiling looks a lot higher than it really is.
At the end, it’s only a few feet high.
I work the entire bin on my knees.
Imagine stacking up-to 120 pound boxes of fish by hand,
coated with wax — so the boxes slide and we slide —
on wax coated aluminum,
slip-sliding away …
.
The Bulk — Downhill View
Incidentally, our guys* loaded so much fish into bulk during Cargo’s Last Stand that the rubber belts of our belt loaders got so coated by wax from the fish boxes that even the non-wax-coated boxes often slid right down the belt during onload and offload.
*I can say guys, literally, because rarely did the ladies get assigned to bulk, but some of the leads didn’t honor some of the older guys in the same way.
Related: Dr. Rich
Tech info:
This is a good color temperature example. Notice how compartment 43 is white, while the same color panels further forward are much warmer. COMP 43 is illuminated mostly by daylight, which is a colder color temperature than the incandescent lights that light the inner belly.
Also, the extreme wide-angle lens distorts my face and especially my head, being at the edge of the photo. But Caesar, in the center, is mostly perspectively balanced.
12/27/09
Lower Deck Aft Bin
Being tall has its disadvantages
12/27/09
12/27/09
Forward Lower Bin Looking Aft
.
Looking Forward
Jon put my After the Fog photo into this historic henway
.
.
I’m sorry to disappoint, but I stayed home on my day off for these,
the last of the regularly scheduled flights —
though I spent much of my next day off (Sunday)
shooting the absolutely last freighter
before it took off on Monday morning,
which I both worked and shot.
Henway = way of the hen, flight schedule
We use the word all the time,
but I can’t find it in the dictionary.
Someone dug this out of their locker to show the number of flights back then:
9 scheduled freighters, 11 total
(2 were delayed arrivals from the previous day — passenger flights at the bottom)
12/27/09
12/27/09
Sal and Caesar build up what was to be the last stack of pallets,
but we’ve found more to send out on other carriers since.
This is only about half the size of a normal stack.
12/27/09
Steve zooms out the door on the rabbit
(propane powered forklift)
While Jim grabs the “last stack” with the big turtle
(diesel powered, “it’s all about tork” Taylor)
12/27/09
Steve supervising the operation
while Jim and Sal build up a pallet of comat
to go out on the bird in the morning
Many years ago, I started calling Steve, ‘.Com’
when I realized how much he was into communication.
He’s also into cuisine, by the way!
12/27/09
Labeling ‘dangerous goods’
Kitiona, who most often goes by ‘Muku,’
but I either call him by his real name
or the title I dubbed: ‘Kitman’
What a great guy!
12/27/09
Loretta and Kitiona ‘Muku’