I had a weekday off late in December and thought that I should spend a few hours spotting airplanes at Ontario International Airport (ONT). I had just paid for the full version of the Flightradar24 app and knew what airplanes would be coming and I was especially anxious to get there because there would be lots of cargo airplanes and the clouds were amazing. I like passenger airplanes too, but if I must be shooting airplanes that aren't warbirds, I prefer to shoot the old cargo airplanes. I started at the west end of the airport and chose an empty commercial lot to shoot departures from. I hung out there for about 30 minutes and got several nice shots of a National 747 taking off and banking sharply to the left. I love shots like this because they display the aircraft at interesting angles that you normally don't get to see. I got some other good shots from this position but they are of passenger airplanes an not very interesting.
Oh, a note on plane-spotting airliners. I am mostly interested in the older cargo aircraft as opposed to the common passenger planes like the 737s, 757s, 320s, etc. The large cargo aircraft interest me because they tend to be older aircraft that are on their way out. I am a fan of history and mechanical things that have been around for a while will always pique my interest more than newer mechanical things. Having said that, I would like to shoot some Boeing 777s and Airbus 380s, as they are monstrous passenger airplanes that fly the longest routes. I will have to go to LAX to shoot those and will be doing just that in the near future.
Oh, you will notice that I have a shot of two JDM cars mixed in here. That's because while I was shooting, the two young men who own these cars pulled up on the road perpendicular to where I was, posed their cars and took pictures and video with their cell phones. They were still there as I was leaving, so I stopped to ask them if they minded if I shot their cars real quick. They were more than happy and one of them asked for my contact information so that he could post my picture on his social media. I sent him the picture that night and he did in fact post it on his social media. It's always a nice compliment when people ask for a copy for themselves.
I'll be back to this spot in the coming weeks as there are more clouds in the forecast. It's important to take advantage of good clouds because we seldom get the in southern California. The month of December, 2021 was awesome for clouds and we are unlikely to see anything like it for many more months or possibly even a few years. I'm glad that I took advantage of them while I could.
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