The Window Seat

When flying it sure it nice to have lots of leg room. That makes the aisle seat a very attractive choice, but the window seat can offer some pretty amazing views that are tough to pass up. I just took a whirlwind trip to Portland Oregon and back and very much enjoyed looking out the window.

On the way up I unfortunately sat at a really scratched up window that also had a fair amount of condensation, which later became ice, between the window's layers. It didn't offer the best of views, although I did manage to see Crater Lake National Park and snap this shot of it with my phone:

If you look closely, near the bottom of the photo you can see the big, round caldera of Crater Lake and also Wizard Island within it. I was fortunate enough to be able to visit CLNP in person in the summer of 2008. Here's how it looked back then:

It certainly is a beautiful place.

For this morning's flight back home I had the window seat again and a better window. I tried some more photography with my phone. I took some still shots like this one of some snow-covered mountains:

I also tried out the free Motion Pictures app for my iPhone, allowing me to make some time-lapse movies of the views.

This was shot with one frame every second and 30 frames are in each second of the resulting video. The app is very easy to use. I'll have to find some other interesting ways to make use of it. Here's another short video shot looking out the air plane window with the same settings:
You'll notice that I didn't do the best of jobs holding the phone very steady. When we flew over the Grand Canyon I was even worse at holding the phone steady. So instead of subjecting you to that bumpy video, I'll just post a still:

 I've got a some more trips coming up soon. If I get any interesting videos, I'll be sure to post them here.