COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — When I saw that I could photograph the United States Navy’s Blue Angels and Air Force’s Thunderbirds on back-to-back weekends earlier in the year, I knew it wasn’t an opportunity I could pass up.
I had photographed the Blue Angels last year at the Lincoln Airshow but was still in the midst of building up my personal collection of cameras and lenses.
I essentially shot the Blue Angels performance with a “Mom’s point-and-shoot” camera body and a 300mm lens that I had purchased off a former co-worker and was likely older than me.
Needless to say it wasn’t the most optimal setup for photographing aircraft traveling just under Mach 1. I still walked away with decent photos but I knew there was so much more I could do if I had better equipment.
Cue Christmas 2023.
I must have openly complained in front of my family enough that I was missing the 600mm zoom lens I had used at my past job. I then found it slightly suspicious that no one had asked me for Christmas gift ideas.
Well I was nearly moved to tears when I opened the package that had my name on it because the wrapping paper hid a brand new Sigma 150-600mm zoom lens.
My brother Jordan and partner Emaly had planned the gift out without my knowledge and my whole family had contributed to gift me the lens.
Now that I didn’t have to budget to get the lens on my own, I immediately purchased a Canon 7D Mark II, a workhorse DSLR camera I had used for action shots at my past job as a newspaper reporter.
With the equipment now in hand to properly shoot an airshow, I decided to check the Blue Angels schedule, thinking they wouldn’t be anywhere close.
However, I saw that they would be the headline act at the Pike Peak Regional Airshow, which just happened to be one week prior to the USAF Thunderbirds taking part in the first air show at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha in several years.
With the stars seemingly aligning, I planned a weekend vacation in Colorado Springs with Emaly and was set to put my new gear to the test.
After spending a day taking the Cog Railway up the 14,000 summit of Pikes Peak the prior day, I arrived at the Colorado Springs airfield ready to go to work.
One item on the bucket list was photographing an F-22 Raptor, the USAF’s fifth generation air superiority stealth fighter. I had yet to see the aircraft in person and a full demonstration of the Raptor was on the agenda
I swear there isn’t a bad angle to photograph the Raptor, the way it is curved to help lower its radar return. I got a dream shot of the fighter passing by at high speed, on its side with the pilot facing our direction.
Later a P-38 Lightning, a World War II era twin engined fighter, joined the Raptor for a heritage flight, which have become popular at airshows.
I had to laugh to myself, with the thought of the poor old P-38’s throttle being firewalled while the F-22 was on the edge of a stall in their formation.
Later there was a demonstration by an EA-18 Growler, a US Navy aircraft, which was later joined by an F4U Corsair, my favorite World War II era aircraft.
The Corsair had a distinctive bent wing, not for any aerodynamic benefits, but to ensure that the massive propellers didn’t strike the earth while the aircraft was on the ground.
A fighter parade featuring additional World War II warbirds made me wish my late maternal grandfather, Tom Renken, was with me to see the P-51 Mustang that was a part of the rotation.
The Mustang was his favorite World War II fighter and we teased each other incessantly about which fighter, the Mustang or Corsair, was truly the fastest fighter of the war.
I can trace my interest in military aviation back to him and several books full of aircraft diagrams that I used to pour over each time I visited my grandparents home.
I also cannot forget my late paternal grandfather, Lester Neben, who was a pilot himself and took us up several times in a Piper Cub that owned.
I remember marveling as a child at how different the pasture and farmland north of Lexington looked up in the air.
Lester, his second wife Janet and and his sister, Bev “Birdy” Schneidereit were killed on June 3, 2001 when the plane he was flying crashed in a pasture near Lyons, Colo. in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
“The plane was actually tipped sideways and the wing hit the hill. It almost did a cartwheel but not completely,” according to what witnesses of the crash told law enforcement.
I was only seven-years-old at the time of the fatal accident and you might think that losing family members to a plane crash might complicate my feelings on air travel.
Far from it, I would get up and fly in a light aircraft at any point today, especially with a camera.
There was a heavily modified Piper aircraft doing aerial tricks at the airshow and I felt that the photos of it and the Mustang were a fitting way to honor both of my grandfathers.
The headliner of the show was the US Navy Blue Angels, who fly Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornets which are colored an unmistakable blue and yellow.
I was glad I had seen their show in Lincoln the year before, because I had a decent idea of which formations they would be flying in.
There is a four ship formation of Blue Angels one through four, followed by a two ship formation of five and six. At the end of the show, they combined formations into a six ship unit.
One of the classic tricks at airshows is the sneak pass, the other aircraft will be holding the crowd’s attention, while a single aircraft sneaks away and then blasts over the crowd at low altitude.
If you are not ready for it, it comes as quite the shock.
Having seen it once, I was nearly ready for it. I saw the four ship formation and then No.5 Blue Angel out in front of the flight line.
I no more than wondered where No. 6 had gone when they came screaming from the direction of the mountains over the top of the us, setting off car alarms along the way.
One shot I was incredibly proud of was when No. 5 was transitioning around the airport with the Pikes Peak in the background. I suddenly realized the photo opportunity and wheeled my lens around and got a perfect shot of No. 5 just under the peak of the mountain.
Going over the photos later at the hotel, I couldn’t have been more happy. The 600mm lens allowed me to seem like I was right in the middle of the action and the 7D Mark II autofocus feature worked overtime, I only missed focus on two or three shots.
As if to put a cherry on top of the entire day, when I was standing on the hotel balcony taking photos of the rising full moon, a Southwest Flight Airlines crossed the face of the moon and I got a once in a lifetime shot.
With the USAF Thunderbirds show coming this weekend, it’s going to be another great opportunity to test myself as a photographer.
