Ron Hashiro

Thunderbirds over Waikiki

July 4, 1997

The Thunderbirds, the high precision flying team of the US Air Force, visited Honolulu and flew an exhibition on Friday, July 4 at 2:00 pm over the skies above Fort DeRussy and Waikiki Beach.

The camera reveals minute details that are too quick or small for the eye to see. The Thunderbird pilots deftly transition their planes from formation flying to the next maneuver all in the blink of an eye. Yet, you get to see how they do it here.

An important part of taking good pictures is to anticipate what would make a good picture, then combine the elements and work towards that quality picture. Here, the four Thunderbirds in formation split apart, making room for Thunderbird Five to make a high speed pass right through the formation. Notice that the Thunderbirds in formation have their landing gears lowered. This picture was taken by using the viewing the formation with the left eye, tracking and anticipating its position, then tracking Thunderbird Five in the viewfinder with the right eye. The shutter was pressed as Number Five approached the expected position of the formation.

Here you see two of the jets flying parallel and heading towards the spectators on the beach. At the precise moment, they pivot towards each other in what seems like a mid-air collision in the making. The moment of crossover was anticipated by watching for the snap of the aileron roll which immediately preceeds the crossover maneuver. The actual moment of the crossover was anticipated by timing the speed and the amount of separation between the jets.

These photos were taken with a Nikkor 300mm F4.5 manual focus lens, Fuji Super G 200 print film and the Nikon N90s camera in program mode with an aperature setting of F4.5. The last photo was taken with the Nikkor 80-200mm F4 manual focus zoom.