My wife and I visit Southern California a few times a year to spend time with her family. On most of these trips I would just pack my “Point-And-Shoot” camera so I would have something to take a picture with should the occassion arise.
On this trip, I decided to pack my DSLR and 150-500mm lens and made plans to spend at least several hours at LAX observing it’s air traffic. For those of you not familiar with LAX, there are 2 outstanding places that you can go to and watch airlines arrive and depart LAX.
One popular spot is near the “In-N-Out” Burger restaurant located near the Northeast corner of the airport property that affords great views of arriving aircraft since they literally fly overhead and are only a few hundred yards away from the the runway. The other popular spot is the observation area located on Imperial Hill that gives a fantastic view of the south side of the airport and is great spot for watching departures.
For this visit, I chose the Imperial Hill area since I was going to be there in the afternoon and early evening and that would give me a good opportunity to see flights leaving LAX.
After spending nearly four hours at the observation area and in between conversations with other Plane Spotting enthusiasts, I managed to snap off 700 pictures. I’ve starting sorting through them and have pulled out some of my favorites so far and have included them here. I head back home on tuesday and I’m thinking I’ll go to the In-N-Out and take a few hundred more photos!
Photos from the Imperial Hill Observation area (Click on the image for full view):
Great photos! What a wonderful way to spend an afternoon. Thank you!
Wow, you had a very productive plane-spotting afternoon. Thanks for posting!
I like the In and Out location because it is great for landings. plus the burgers of course.
Glad the new lens worked out for you! I’m still debating on which one to get 😮
that sigma 150-500 is wonderful!
Great Pictures, that looks like it was a lot of fun!
@Nathan – It was….such a great variety, especially for someone stuck in a midwest regional yawner of an airport!
Did anyone think you were a terrorist for taking so many pictures? 🙂 j/k
@Mike – actually police did tour up and down the street, but left us alone.