High Flight

High Flight,
originally uploaded by gail on the web.

A poem from today's WWII airshow at Mt. Pocono Municipal Airport -- "Red White and Blue" -- sponsored by Jeep. (Click the pic to enlarge.) David says it's the most well-known flying poem there is, and ironically (for this airshow, anyway) it was written not by an American but a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot.

David:

"John Gillespie Magee was one of many Commonwealth pilots flying in the Battle of Britain. The poem, High Flight, was in a letter he sent home to his mother. He was killed in his Spitfire in 1941, not in combat but in a midair collision in the clouds - at age 19."

Today was the second day of the airshow, we thought we'd catch the end of it and David could say hello to some of his flying buddies and the cadets from CAP Squadron 207.

I took about half a roll of film with David's old Pentax SLR, and shot the rest in digital with my Canon A80. David took along his Panasonic Lumix, so between us we had three cameras.

I haven't shot film since probably 2001, and hadn't picked up an SLR since high school. This was very evident when:

- I pressed the shutter button and discovered I'd forgotten to advance the film after the last frame
- I forgot to check the light meter on a couple of shots
- I forgot to put the lens cap on afterwards.

It'll be interesting to see how the roll turns out. I'm excited to be shooting with an SLR again, that's for sure. By forcing myself to dust the cobwebs off my brain and concentrate on framing my shots, it helped to pull my mind away from yesterday's devastating news and a sleepless night with disturbing thoughts.