The Air and Space museum, like so many other places in Washington was in reality nothing more than a bloated front. Huge and extravagant remains of a cold war mind set. Buried under the museum were catacombs connected like sewers with the Lincoln Memorial, the Smithsonian’s, the White House itself. And the rats that ran through these tunnels had been here – forever. Presidents come and go but the system remains in place. So did the smell of decay. “How long would this be allowed to function?” he often wondered. Even Rome finally crumbled under the weight of its own hubris. So to would this someday.
But that wasn’t his problem. Staying alive long enough to get out was all that drove him on. That and – his own demons. Today he was to meet a contact named Rick at the Boeing 307 Stratoliner at 7am. He’d never met Rick and he was always nervous with new contacts. He’d been walking around the airliner for almost 5 minutes when a spotted a man walking in a stilted pattern trying too hard to look like he was looking at the same plane he was looking at.
“You familiar with this plane?” he asked the man.
“Yes. I knew a lady who worked on these during World War II named Gail.” He replied.
“Gail from Montana?” he asked.
“Yes. I met her at the Apollo14 Service Module in Florida.”
The prearranged sequence of statements having been met he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Glad to meet you. You must be…” He stopped. Two security guards strolled by, taking no note of two simple men admiring an airplane.
“Right. I think we know who we are. Let’s get going.”
“Where’s the package? It’s not on you?” Rick asked, annoyed at the missing box. “I was told you’d have it with you.”
“I do have it.” He replied. “It’s nearby. Don’t worry.”
Rick led him out of the building and towards a waiting vehicle.
He noticed it was running and had been for a while from the puddle of water that was gathering under the car. Condensation from the vehicle’s air conditioner.
Rick opened the rear door and motioned for him to get in. Something wasn’t right. He turned and gave a quick glance around. “You have a cigarette?” he said as he forced a smile.
“No.” he paused. “I don’t. No one in the agency smokes. When did you start?”
“Old habit I guess.” Nothing looked wrong, but everything felt wrong. He scanned further and deeper around him.
“Come on. Get it. What are you doing? Rick demanded, stepping towards him.
“No. No, I think we should walk for a bit.” It was the last thing he said before the lights went out. Someone, something crashed down from behind him. He wasn’t knocked out, but he was fading. Rushing sounds, bodies pushing him into the car. Words jumbled together that he couldn’t make sense of.
“What was that?”
“If I had ever been here before I would probably know just what to do!”
Warmth flowing through him. Filling his head with noise now. Garbled and maddening.
“Search his pockets”
“Million year old carbon…”
“Allus won’t be happy.”
He was going out and panicking. But then – he realized – he had been here before.
They had all been here before.
They had all been here …
They had all been…

Powerful looking image… nice angle to shoot at – just love the composition, excellent!
Great news the final launch of Atlantis coincides with your birthday… yep, it’s also my BIG 4-0 this year – June 9th… sheesh, where did the last decade go!?

Kennedy Space Center is on my list of places to visit… Amazing shot Trey!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edenbrackstone/

Gah… I love this one! Such a gorgeous treatment to start with. And I believe that’s the Apollo command module below. I watched on a balmy July afternoon in 1969, as three intrepid adventurers visited the moon in that thing. Always loved the design of it!

Excellent!

I remember the 1969 landing like it was yesterday. Over at Dick Frazar’s house eating “moon dip” Regular dip with craters in it. Funny.
Great shot

Cool. I took brackets of that exact same composition a year ago and haven’t gotten around to processing them yet. Now I don’t have to.

Awesome photo, Trey.
I love the detail on this. Makes a nice gallery piece.

This is beautiful! Same question, how did you processed this image? How did you achieved this ‘look’ in the colors? I wanted to ask you about this for a long time. Everytime I see your image, I am SURE it’s yours, but I don’t know why this is! It’s something about the colors, not about the light so much I think. I am sure there is something you’re not telling, hehe. But that’s cool!

May your future solar revolutions continue to treat you well and help to provide additional HDR goodness such as this.

Amazing

I think Google’s a little shy of saying whether it will help with a site’s rankings just yet, as that might drive a lot of abuse to their little button. But I say it certainly can’t hurt since they’re on the bandwagon of adding social influence to their results.

Awesome shot too! That must have been a great experience!

It was so exciting for me to see the Saturn V – I remember trying to impress on my lovely wife the wonder of it all. She was non-plussed to say the least. Wonderful pix and a little bit better than mine from my point and shoot I always found space travel inspiring; here is a poem I wrote about it: http://www.stewartbaird.com/moon/

Great shot, I love how it has a glow effect. Any advice on getting tickets for the next launch, I could use all the help I can get. I singed up for the raffle, wish me luck I’ve missed out on the last four.

Trey, my man with the plan, how on earth do you get the insane color levels you get out of some of your industrial HDR’s? Mine tend to be either dull or colors all over the place.