Showing posts with label planes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label planes. Show all posts

Wednesday, 16 May 2012

The Gallery: Morning

This post is for Week 99 of Tara's Gallery - click here to see all the other great entries.

The prompt this week was 'Morning'.  (I'm intrigued to see which theme she comes up with for Week 100, by the way - no pressure Tara...).  It's hard to capture the split-second timing and controlled chaos of our mornings on a school day here - I suspect they are pretty much like yours - so instead I'm going to show you something completely different.

Yesterday morning was the last one of my parents' visit to us, and before they headed off back to the UK my father had expressed a particular wish to see a plane junkyard that is situated around 4 kilometres away.

I think that originally, the planes were gathered together on what is a historically important site for Russia's aviation industry with the intention of creating some kind of museum.  I think - but I'm not sure.  As with so many initiatives here, the real reasons have been lost in the mists of time and the project has been seemingly abandoned.  All that remains of the original grand plan is around 30 once-proud, now dreadfully decaying combat planes and helicopters, graffiti'd, vandalised, and forlorn, herded into a 200 metre strip at the edge of an airfield which is now used by a driving school.

It's a balmy 28degC outside right now, but yesterday morning when we made our visit it was around 12degC, grey, dank and chilly.  The perfect day to photograph what is left of a once-mighty war machine.  It seemed only right to show it in black and white... (as ever, click on the photo to enlarge it).