Photography

The backstory

In support of my contention that the most important thing contributing to a great photo, more than equipment, sometimes more than planning, is “being there”. If you are not there, you are not there. My submission came about as a result of being where I never would have been, had it not been for my cancer treatments.

2/9/2023 I was near downtown for a treatment at Tampa General Cancer Center and Joe Biden was the University of Tampa speaking on SS and healthcare. As we left downtown, I knew there was a slim chance to catch AF1 as it departed, and I knew not to go near the airport, so my wife watched ADSB while I looked for a spot on the causeway to pull over safely. I finally had to just pull over on the side of road as the plane departed to the south. I had my Nikon Z6ii and brand new 200-500mm lens but no teleconverter so 500mm was it. As is my nature, I was disappointed to not have a larger lens. Sometimes my nature excludes some potential great photos. In this case the background sky ended up being as important as the subject. I think lesson learned, we shall see.

The screenshot of ADSB shows my location, the second photo is the RAW file of today’s submission. Yes, I had to strangle every pixel to come close to an acceptable image, almost made it. This is one of 165 shots of the departure, one of those I entered in the April 2025 contest “Aspirations”. To see 21 representative samples of the 165 RAW shots go here: https://jamesdevore.smugmug.com/Joseph-Robinette-Biden-Jr/n-7L6HHQ