Today was the summer solstice, the Northern Hemisphere’s longest day. But seeing as I’ve been north of the Arctic Circle since Saturday morning this was a regression, in daylight terms. No problem with that however. The 24-hour daylight was nice in some ways but it could become monotonous after a while. Shot taken from above Manchester on the final flight home: the city centre is just visible down there in the haze.
I am sat in my hotel room in Tokyo as I type this, but there can be no photos of Japan for this day as I didn’t touch Asian soil until Tuesday morning. This is Helsinki, which a few years ago had several shots on this blog in its own right but since then has become another one of those places (Copenhagen, Schiphol, Istanbul….) seen as an airport transfer but not otherwise ‘real’. How does it compare? Well, it has a decent amount of booze in it as you can see. And there was sunshine, which was certainly more than there was in Manchester on departure, or indeed on Tokyo on arrival, both teeming with rain.
On evenings like this it is as if the flight paths are creating some kind of tapestry. There is the latest weave going in, from top left. We humans seem to have found various ways to fiddle with the climate, and these artificial clouds are just another example of that, but they’re so everyday now, do we even think about them as much as we should?
The truly superstitious probably wouldn’t have booked to fly on Friday 13th, but I am not among them, and the flights didn’t seem any less busy to me. This one was taken somewhere between Moscow and Amsterdam on leg one of my journey home.
Sometimes the shots just have that extra little thing about them that you didn’t even realise was there when you took it. I’ve travelled today, to a place that I’ve not been to before and which you’ll see over the next few days, rest assured, but this shot was taken en route. These clouds are not natural, they are being pumped out of some power station or other, maybe in France or northern Germany, I’m not completely sure. I loved the way they flattened out at the top in some cold layer. But it was only when I uploaded this one that I spotted the plane…
Although I have been doing plenty of work trips recently they have all been in the UK, and it’s been six months since I was actually at Manchester airport heading off somewhere for work. Today I changed planes in Schiphol, one of those hub airports that almost everyone who flies probably ends up at some point or another, and what a joyful place it is…. I was sitting behind this fence watching the arriving passengers get off the plane we were about to get on, and I kind of like this shot just for the effect, how the fence and the light make the woman look sort of ghostly.
Taken somewhere over Wales on our final descent into Manchester this morning, allowing for the time difference a 19-hour journey door to door. The humps in the foreground are the wing and engine; behind are various hills poking above a layer of mist and fog.
Off I go on my way home. I hope to be back one day — but that is true of many places. I guess there are several where I have visited for the last time in my life… and there is no way of telling which. Anyway, enough of that — check out the Bay Bridge in the foreground, Golden Gate behind, and Alcatraz to centre right. A very impressive city, and an enjoyable and interesting week.
As pictured from the final descent into Bergen Flesland airport this afternoon. Tell me I’m not the only person who sees this. I’m just waiting for the moment at which it snaps its jaws open and consumes the yacht without a trace.I have looked for this island (or peninsula, or archipelago) on a map of the area but can’t identify it; perhaps it only reveals its monstrous nature from this very specific angle.
Postscript: As the comment indicates one of my followers has since identified this as the island of Snilstveitøy.
God I spend a lot of time at Copenhagen airport. I mean, it’s not a bad airport as these things go, but it’s still an airport, thus essentially soulless. Extra hour’s delay today as well.
Yes, I know I could have sat six inches to the left and got the symmetries on this shot exactly right, but there was a large Scandinavian bloke sat there and anyway I couldn’t be entirely obvious taking this. If I hadn’t pointed it out you wouldn’t have noticed it anyway… right?
Being 42 