http://althouse.blogspot.com/2.....-cant.html

A key point, which I don’t think has been brought up on S&L (apoligies if I’m wrong), is that an F-16 is hardly the plane one would pick for a photo-op.

http://www.check-six.com/Crash.....h_site.htm

Notice the photogs used a Learjet and some heavy duty gear? And this from the UK shows how professional photos should appear:

http://www.raf.mod.uk/news/arc.....44352A6823

Then again maybe we’re reading too much into things, This is the Obama Administration after all, and spending a third of a million on a photo shoot arming the photog with just a consumer digital camera can’t really be unexpected.

As it happens, most of what the big 747 does is classified. It is not just a PR vehicle but also a flying command post with an enormous communications center and tons and tons of classified things on board.

Understood. However, we have been assured the sole purpose of this mission was to take a picture of the plane – hard to claim that qualifies as classified information.

It strains credulity that an administration that rushed to inform our enemies of interrogation techniques could withhold a flight manifest for a photo-op on the basis it is classified information.

Also, canary, the air traffic around that area is crammed by Newark, LGA and JFK, all very busy places and their route of flight probably was just as confining. One possible reason the SOL looks so tiny is that the big plane was not permitted below a certain altitude, even if it IS the US flagship.

But with all that said, it was a very unwise, unsatisfactory event. I’ll even go so far as to say the idiot in the big chair truly DIDN’T know what was going on as, given this administration’s inability to function in an efficient manner, as with both Bush’s and Reagan, with hippies in control of all aspects of protocol, I’ll bet the photo-op was scheduled wayyyyyy back in August of 2008. Most of that is handled by the USAF and was probably on the docket for quite awhile and with no orders to countermand it, the plan went ahead as scheduled.

As it was, a little “heads up” on the part of the PR department for the WH would have been in order. A small news segment to say that the big 747 would be lumbering around so don’t get upset on the three news networks. Heck, it would’ve been a great opportunity for the newsies to drool at the almighty’s awesome reach of power.

But, sadly, as with all things Obama….it was a clusterf— of the usual dimensions. Like most, I figure it would’ve been best to just not do it at all. But the ridiculous excesses we are accused of do not apply to the black stick or his capos.

On another note, I have nothing but extreme sympathy for the USAF personnel who have to cater to this tool whenever they have to take him and his wife on a shopping junket for ugly-ass shoes.

I just looked at what you’re referring to and that ferry has just “backed” out and is turning to head back to N.J. I’ve been to the Statue of Liberty several times and that is how they maneuver.

They do. They use “camera pods.”

BTW, the large photo released by the WH had already been processed through Adobe’s Photoshop, according to the accompanying data.

The photo as released from the WH is basically unprocessed. Look at the full sized image… and then look again at the small image posted by WCBS. See how white the VC25a looks in the WCBS photo? It’s been retouched by WCBS for the web.

Why didn’t the WH do that? Not everybody was going to publish it online. Some in magazines… some in fishwraps… some online… some on-air.

Side note: With film, you shot ‘bright’, and you could bring some image back in processing… if you underexposed, there was nothing to ‘save’… in Digital it is the opposite. Once the sensor is overexposed, there is no saving the image, but if you UNDERexpose a shot, you can bring a lot of the image out in Photoshop… at the expense of the image looking ‘grainy’. So when you shoot Digital, you shoot slightly dark… then you can fix it in Photoshop. Pop this image in Photoshop, click the settings to Automatically ‘fix’ the levels, and WHAM! White plane. Also, shooting a photo of anything white or black is best done when overcast… you get a MUCH better photo than if you shot in direct sunlight. Best of all if you can get the ground in the sunlight, but the plane in the shadow of a cloud, but you work with what you got.

And yes, this was a terrible shot when it comes to composition, etc… I have no idea if it’s normal practice to take Promo shots from inside the cockpit… I would think that they had figured out a way to use the Aircraft’s surveillance system somehow… hook up a decent camera instead of a FLIR or something. I truly hope that our military aircraft have the capability to take better photographs than my cell phone.

None of this takes away from the Criminal Stupidity of the act, or the excellent point about this being such a badly composed and shot image that it just CAN’T be the reason for the flight. But it might explain why the image released from the WH to the media looks so yellow and dull.

I’m waiting to see the passenger manifest of the flight to see which Saudi noble(s) was/were on board.

In an amazing coincidence, Soros ended up in control of Indy Mac for pennies on the dollar, which should make him tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars that he will spend on good causes. Who wudda thunk he could be such a lucky guy?

But NO WAY Caldera was involved in any of that. NO WAY.

He’s a Democrat, after all, and the Democrats are squeeky clean when it comes to stuff like that.