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It was a clear day in sunny, beautiful Los Angeles and photographer Mike Kelley didn't want to waste it. So he decided to camp out at LAX for a day to take a photo of as many planes taking off as he could; the result is the amazing composite photo you see above.
Kelley took 400 photos over the course of seven hours. (Creating the composition with 75 photos when he got home took even longer.) He writes:
My intent was to capture only planes that flew out of LAX - highlighting and emphasizing what an incredible airport that this city has. It's really fascinating to look at all the planes heading in different directions, ferrying people all over the world, all originating from Los Angeles. In this shot alone, there are planes heading to destinations on six continents - either direct or via multi-stop routes on the same flight number. Guangzhou, Auckland, Frankfurt. In order to capture the shot, I set up a tripod and photographed every single plane that flew across my frame anywhere from 3 to 10 times. Using sandbags to ensure that the camera didn't move and coming as close to peeing myself as I ever have in my 26 years of existence from not wanting to leave my camera unattended, this resulted in over 400 images from which the composition is built, but not all of them were used.
