Sometimes You Have To Take In The Scale Of It All

I think it is fairly safe to say that I have been around airplanes quite a lot, both as a passenger and on the ground photographing them, but sometimes even I am taken back by the sheer scale and size of it all.

Yesterday I spent the day at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) creating content for an up coming piece on United Airlines. In the process of shooting this content I was given outstanding access to United Airlines’ operations as they overhauled aircraft cabin interiors, as well as to the ground operations at SFO to created related content.

Yesterday is the first time I had a ‘WOW’ moment in a long time when it came to being around airplanes. While I have been close to Boeing 777-222 (772) aircraft in the past and knew the massive size of the airplanes engines, yesterday I had the chance to step inside a Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engine and it’s scale is tremendous. There is a difference in seeing the PW4000 from the gate window, or even being in front of it on the ground as I have been before, and then physically stepping into the engine. I am not short, when I stand up straight (not as often as my mother would like) I am 6ft 3in tall … however inside the 772 engine, I am tiny. The diameter of the engine is 9ft 4in. To put this in perspective to the sheer scale of this engine … the maximum fuselage diameter of a Bombardier Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ) is 8ft 10in.

Normally I tend to find it fun when a large aircraft wing passes directly over my head while shooting content … and I’ll post some raw video of a 747-422 (744) doing just that (shot with a true 12mm lens perspective) in a day … but yesterday it was the scale of the 772 PW4000 engine that but the scale of it all back into perspective.

Below is a self portrait of me inside the 772 PW4000 engine … and a still image of a 744 wing passing right over my head.

…oh yea, and this is the first blog post where all the content was created on the iPad, including all the importing and editing of the photos.

Happy Flying!