My flight home

My flight home on Sunday was a late one. I left Miami at 815, and, with a stop in Atlanta, wouldn’t get to Charlotte until 1am. When I booked it, I thought, “This is really going to make for a miserable work day on Monday. Oh well. You know who would enjoy dealing with this pickle? FUTURE Kelley.”* I assumed that future-Kelley would seriously resent past-Kelley come a 6 am wake-up Monday morning.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t that bad. I had enough caffeine to get me through. It allowed me an extra day in Miami, and I was able to get some fun pictures.

Have you ever seen a sunset from an airplane? I know I have somewhat, but not with this intensity. Being a mile in the sky made it seem as if the sunset was being sucked away into the distance, instead of heading down below the horizon. We passed clouds so thick they looked like holes, absent of light, in the sky. Some so transparent, they merely blurred and dimmed the colors. And some filled with lightning, which made for a surreal paradox of both beautiful and frightening.

It made the entire late night travel worth it.

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I wish dearly that I was in the front of the plane, and didn’t have this wing, or the distracting bright light in the way. I tried editing out the light, I tried cropping them differently, but something just didn’t feel right about editing the pictures at all. I wanted them exactly as I had seen them, straight out of the camera.

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I have to be grateful, though, that I didn’t switch to a closer seat on the East side of the plane. Dan attempted to change it, so I would get off faster and have a better chance of making my connection, if delayed. So I will take my distracting wing, over mere darkness in the other available seat.

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As the sunset went to bed, we were left with just the storm clouds. I did what anyone with a DSLR has attempted, and, at one point or another, has failed. Trying to capture lightning. Except, since I am a novice, I added the following: From a mile in the air. In a turbulent moving vehicle. Without a tripod. On too low of a shutter speed. Too many attempts later, I captured the following 2 pictures.

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I still think they are cool. In contrast, the lady next to me on the plane thinks I’m a complete lunatic. Who takes a million pictures on a turbulent plane, while its pitch black outside? Randomly checking the screen to see that, yet again, that picture was completely black?

Part of me wondered whether my camera was on the list of approved portable electronic devices. The other part of me knew that the on-a-power-trip flight attendant would set me straight if it were not. And a final part of me wondered whether the flight attendant in the black turtleneck was male or female.

The world may never know.

*How I Met Your Mother  … anyone get it?