Screamer's Visayan island fly-by

I've had a few minutes (15 actually) of spare time the other day and I fumbled about thinking what better to do among these choices:

• Continue reading Michael Schumacher's bio, The Whole Story
• Continue playing Gran Turismo on my PSP
• Revive a couple of photos I've taken before and do something creative using Photoshop

I decided to forego the first two options and give the third one a go.

I've always been wowed by shots of fighter jets as they are cutting through the Earth's atmosphere. Whether their backgrounds are of the sky (as these machines are photographed from the side or underneath), or the sea/land as their flight is captured from above their position, I'm sold.

I particularly have a soft-spot for my all-time fave, the Navy's F-14 Tomcat; and a couple of others -- the F-15 Eagle and the F-22 Raptor.

Let me get this straight -- no, I don't get a boner just by looking at military planes (like Michael Bay.)

Explaining why the Tomcat's my "ultimate fighter plane" is easy -- Macross. Roy Fokker's Valks always had the Jolly Roger marking on their tails. The VF-1S also has vari-angle wings. Besides, it's been an impossible childhood dream of mine to at least get into an F-14's cockpit and maybe let some top gun fly me around.

The F-15 Eagle and the F-22 Raptor reasoning also comes easy -- Starscream.

Ok then, I searched in my photo bank for pictures of my Masterpiece Starscream and a viable background.

The Screamer pic I used was very similar to this one that I posted on my Flickr stream.

An island photo I used for the background.
I took this photo of an island in the Visayas shortly after takeoff during one of our flights back to Manila from Boracay.

This was what I came up with, a good quarter of an hour later --

I just added condensation trails from the tips of his wing to add more spunk. Adding afterburner flames would take me about 5 minutes more so I decided against it. :)