Frost Witch
Originally uploaded by doug_r

Taken out the window of an Airbus A-319 at about 35,000 feet somewhere over the Dakotas with a Canon G9 on 7 April 2008.

I'm not sure everyone will anthropomorphize this pattern of frost filled cracks in a airplane window into a witch riding a broom, but it popped out at me after studying it for a while.

This image grew out of frustration trying to take aerial landscape photos out the plane window. However, on older planes, the windows craze and scratch a bit from the expansion/contraction cycles and ablation that take place during flight. At high altitude, frost begins to form in the scratches and pits forming random designs. After fighting trying to take pictures through the frost, I finally decided to see what could be done taking pictures *of* the frost against the deepening color of the sky above the ground surface.

The new G9 is an amazing little camera but one that takes some learning. When you get it working, you can just keep diving down and down into the image and it stays sharp. All in all an astounding little camera.