I love airports and airplanes. I always have. I’m not sure where the love came from. Perhaps my neighbor “Mr. Chandler” the Air force Pilot who first took me up in a small plane. Perhaps the poem “High Flight” that the local station played every evening along with the “Star Spangled Banner” just before signing off for the night.
When I was a young teenager growing up in Austin I would ride my bicycle to the ‘old’ Austin airport & watch the planes takeoff and land. In that more innocent time there were no fences or gates around airports. If you were brave (or foolish) enough you could walk right up to the runway. (I have a wonderful memory relating to that I will post at another time.) Shortly after high school I took flying lessons through the aero club at what was then the Bergstrom Air force base and is now the Austin Bergstrom International Airport. In fact I first soloed very near where I was standing when I took this photo. To me airports and airplanes have never lost their magic. Flying for me can be a near spiritual experience. As John Gillespie Magee wrote in the previously mentioned poem:

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless falls of air…
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor eer eagle flew –
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

This photo of 6th Street in downtown Austin was shot about 7:50 one evening. The great thing about photographing night shots shortly after sunset is you you get that nice “Speilberg Blue” nighttime sky. The bad thing about photographing night shots on 6th street shortly after sunset is that for a spot that is known for it’s lively crowds, there are very few people.  6th street doesn’t really get started till around 10:pm. (To get an idea what 6th street looks like on a busy night check out the SXSW posting that was shot at Maggie Mae’s right across the street from here looking towards the Blind Pig Pub.) Meanwhile… I had no choice but to take the shot while the light was right, the carriage driver could just relax and enjoy the evening while she was waiting on the night.