Airplanes are cool.

I’m 42 years old, and I’ve flown dozens of times all over the U.S., to Mexico, and Ireland.  Even though air travel can sometimes be a patience-testing experience, I still think it is a very cool way to travel.  Airplanes are simply amazing machines - monumental feats of engineering and an impressive application of physics for a desired goal.  I am what you would call an aviation enthusiast.

Fortunately for me, Baltimore-Washington International Airport is just fifteen minutes away, and there is a great little observation park just south of one of the main runways.  I took my kids to this park many times when they were toddlers…the look on their faces when a large jet flew by was priceless.

Yesterday was a beautiful day, so my wife and I packed up the kids and drove over to the park, and this time I brought my recently acquired (over the summer) Olympus e510 DSLR.  This is my first DSLR, and I did a lot of research before buying it.  I’ll write another post about that later, but I had the chance to really play with the camera while photographing some planes on final approach.  Granted, my pictures are not up to the standards of the ‘professional’ plane spotters over on Airliners.net, but we all have to start somewhere!

As you can see, I also took a picture of the crescent moon last night…it was a very clear night and again, this was just a chance for me to play with the features of the camera.  Although a touch grainy - I expected that - I think it’s a fairly decent shot.

Let me know what you think!