KODAK

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Also, a lot of let’s just say “bad gouge” in this video, at least as per a friend in the know in Army Reserve Aviation. But still a pretty big shift in the way the Army does things.

*dEeP iNTeL is what we really need here..

Sam is a fantastic human being and he and his team did an incredible job! Nice seeing someone deserving get a flight in the jet too.

Also remember that Dan Gryder is legitimately batshit crazy, so I’d be really careful believing his perspective on literally anything..

Patty is the real deal - it’s a shame folks want to remember someone for a single poor choice measured against the entirety of their lives. And I say this as a dude who has never drank a drop of alcohol in my life..

All fair points - I guess I should have said that the broader DoD has competent, capable, and eminently experienced air to air photographers available for a sortie like this even if it’s not Senior Airman Timmy from the 69th Combat Camera squadron. Edwards and Eglin have multiple civilian and military professionals who do air to air work full-time and would frankly have killed for a chance to shoot photos like this.. With their technical ability and know-how already as a given I’m certain they would have come back with better results from this once-in-a-lifetime flight. The behind the scenes video made it fairly clear that the civilian PAO who chose Blair for this flight was a fan of his - I think we all know that’s the way the real world works, and I have no issue with that. Over bake as many static photos of a U-2 as you like (“those who can do, those who can’t oversaturate their shots in Photoshop”), but he clearly had/ has zero experience in air to air photography which is the only skillset that actually matters here. When we (DoD) burn cool opportunities like these with influencer types there’s very little gain in the long run, but it also makes it immeasurably harder for the actual professionals to do good work in the future. I guess that’s my frustration.

On the active-duty side there are enlisted Combat Camera photographers; when I was in Bahrain flying the MH-53E in 2021 we had an Air Force CC photographer that came out on det and got some great air to air and air to ground images. Additionally, the USAF flight test locations (Edwards and Eglin specifically) have full-time civilian flight test photographers that specialize in air to air documentary photo and video. To fly a ‘celebrity’ photog with no background in air to air photography is sort of a slap in the face to the professionals who work incredibly hard day in and day out to share the mission of the Air Force, at least in my humble opinion.

Maybe an unpopular opinion here: those images are absolutely terrible. Obviously style is highly subjective and we all like what we like, but it’s such a shame the Air Force wasted such a unique and special opportunity when there are civilian and DoD professionals that specialize in taking air to air photos literally on the payroll. Hopefully this at least opens the door for one of those pros to do it right one day soon..

So few “content creators” (I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit..) on YouTube do mishap videos right, but this is as close to ‘right’ as we will likely get. Good on Gunny for asking questions and (mostly) getting out of the way so Mark could tell his story, and what a story is was..

Not sure where that specific altitude figure came from, but beware if it was part of the aforementioned WC video. He straight-up makes things up, to include having definitively stated that the AIM-9X that took out the Chinese balloon had no warhead. His videos recently have become fiction at best, embarrassing self-promoting drivel at worst..