Read
this before checking out the picture. Knowing the history helps to
appreciate it.
Through
the viewfinder of his camera, Ensign John Gay could see the A/F18
drop from the sky as it headed toward the port side of the Aircraft
Carrier Constellation at 1,000 feet. The pilot increases his speed
to750mph, vapor flickering off the curved surfaces of the plane. At
the precise moment of breaking the sound barrier, 200 yards form the
carrier, a circular cloud formed around the Hornet. With the Pacific
Ocean just 75 feet below the aircraft being rippled by the aircraft's
pass, Gay hears the explosion of the sonic boom and snapped his camera
shutter once. "I clicked the same time I heard the boom and I knew
I had it. "What he had was a technically meticulous depiction of the
sound barrier being broken on July 7, 1999, somewhere over the Pacific
between Hawaii and Japan. Sports Illustrated, Brills Content, and
Life ran the photo.
The photo
recently took first prize in the science and technology division in
the World Press Photo 2000 contest, which drew more than 42,000 entries
worldwide. Because Ensign Gay is a member of the military he was ineligible
for the cash prize. "In the last few days, I've been getting calls
from everywhere about it again. It's very humbling." Gay, 38, manages
a crew of eight assigned to take intelligence photographs from the
high-tech belly (TARPS POD) of an F-14 Tomcat.In July, Gay had been
part of a Joint Task Force Exercise as the Constellation made its
way to Japan.
Gay used
his personal Nikon N90S, set his 80-300mm zoom lens on 300mm, his
shutter speed at 1/1000 of a second and the aperture at F5.6. "I put
it on full manual," Gay said. "I tell young photographers who are
into automatic everything, you aren't going to get that shot on auto.
The plane is too fast. The camera can't keep up."
At sea
level a plane had to exceed 741 mph to break the sound barrier. The
change in pressure as the plane outruns all of the pressure and sound
waves in front of it is heard on the ground as an explosion - the
sonic boom. The pressure change condenses the water in the air as
the jet passes these waves. Altitude, wind, speed, humidity, the shape
and trajectory of the plane all affect the breaking of the barrier.
On July 7 everything was perfect. "You see vapor flicker around the
plane. It gets bigger and bigger, then BOOM - it's instantaneous.
One second the vapor cloud is there, the next it's gone."
Now,
go ahead, view the picture.
