Sometimes I feel like I'm Don Quixote chasing after photography's windmills. Like rainbows. I have seen dozens of rainbows over my photography career, but I have ever been in the "right" place to make a really great photo of one. I have never been around the "right" scene to put in front it. So I always settle for a strip mall parking lot, or a highway overpass. Even when I lived out on the Great Plains and drove past farms all the time, I was never near, say a windmill, when the rain cleared and a rainbow would appear.
Like the Stephen Stills song, "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with," which was inspired by a line fellow musician Billy Preston used, which likely came from the song "When I'm Not Near the Girl I Love, I Love the Girl I'm Near," from the 1947 Broadway musical, wait for it… "Finian's Rainbow."
I was sitting in a church pew recently, waiting for an event to begin. They were running late and I thought to myself how nice the light on the altar looked at that moment and what a beautiful picture it would make - it only the participants could start on time.
Of course, time and tide wait for no man, and as it always does, the sun kept moving, taking the beautiful stained-glass light along with it.
Still waiting, all I could do was drift away in thought, to all the photos I have "missed" in my career because of bad timing. Some because I was late myself. Either coming from another assignment, trying to find a parking space, or just flittering on Facebook. And I can't tell you how many times someone has said to me "oh, you should've been here yesterday." Or, "it's too bad you can't come back tomorrow."
Such is the life of a newspaper photographer. Maybe they don't even have that luxury any more either, but over the years I have thought to myself, I wonder what it'd be like to be a National Geographic photographer and go back to a scene five or six times until the sunset unfolded "just right."
The flip side to that is what makes news photography so worthwhile, and what makes covering the "same" assignments over and over again, year after year such a joy. For every "missed" photo out there, there have been just as many wonderful images "made" as unexpected opportunities presented themselves.
So, back to the blue airplane. I was driving on I-95 south of the city on my way to an assignment in Delaware County, on one of our recent days where April showers bring May flowers. It was toward the end of the day (I work a night shift) when right near the stadiums in South Philadelphia the rain suddenly stopped and the sky in front of me started to open up and I could see sunlight about to break through the clouds.
I looked in my rear view mirror, and seeing a still-dark sky, knew right away what was gonna happen. Of course, just as I realized there might soon be a wonderfully brilliant rainbow - maybe arcing right over the city skyline, I started my climb - driving almost straight into the about-to-set sun - up the double-decked Girard Point Bridge I could look down on the Navy Yard, but with no place to pull over (having covered many, many accidents on the shoulders of highways, I have only once in my entire career ever pulled over to take a picture on freeway) I started doing the mental math figuring out what I could find if I got off at one of the next two or three exits. My best shot might have been just heading for the airport, but I discounted that idea figuring the rainbow would be long gone by the time I got to the roof level of the parking lot.
So, instead I opted for the very first available exit, #15 for Enterprise & Island Avenue. What the heck, I thought, the waste treatment plant might make for an ironic foreground. Still peering into my rear view mirror, I could see the rainbow forming up, even as I could see sun about to disappear below the tiny slit of open sky. Time and my rainbow was about to expire. Maybe Ft. Mifflin, I thought, turning left. The rainbow was indeed fading, and I was still frustrated that there was nothing but wetland weed phragmites - and parked trucks, until I rounded a curve and saw the jetliner shrink-wrapped in blue plastic.
(Curious about what looks like the private jet of the Blue Man Group? I was, so I googled "Blue Plastic Wrapped Plane at PHL" and found an online aviation user group forum thread started with a pilot wondering about an aircraft he saw. It seems it was a US Air flight to Ft, Lauderdale, an Airbus A320-200 that had a rejected takeoff in March, 2014, coming to a stop with the nose gear collapsed. From what I can tell, the NTSB investigation took a while, but the plane seems on its way to salvage now, with one commenter saying plans are to ship it out by moving it onto a barge on the Delaware River.)