Air Force One Mystery Flight: Promotional Photo Shoot? -By G. Norman
Promotional Shot of AF1 Buzzing the NYC Skyline
I am reminded of the scene from the movie Close Encounters when the Air Force general presents a picture to a crowd of agitated citizens and says “This… is a UFO.” They all begin to babble excitedly, and then the General pulls the photo back and tells them the truth: it’s actually a photo of a pie plate thrown into the air by his son. I like that scene. It cracks me up a little.
Today, I get to be like that Air Force General.
A week or so ago, citizens of New York City were understandably thrown into a momentary panic when a large jetliner was seen buzzing the city. The jetliner in question was not, however, being operated by terrorists (technically). It was, in fact, Air Force One, the official plane of the President of the United States. So what was it doing swooping ominously over the New York skyline, unannounced and apparently so secretly that President Obama himself said he didn’t know about it? Well, according to the official administration explanation, they were taking promotional pictures of it.
Here is a sample of one of the pictures taken during that shoot.
Looks pretty good, doesn’t it? I mean, that’s obviously the New York skyline behind it, majestic and bustling, lit with the new sun of a bright spring day. And there, of course, is the great jet itself, swooping grandly along the coast, angling gently toward JFK airport.
Or not.
No, it isn’t a pie plate thrown into the air by my son. It’s a composite I made in Photoshop. It took me about twenty minutes, and that includes doing a quick online image search to find usable pictures of both Air Force One and the New York City skyline (post 9-11, of course). Granted, I am a graphic artist. This is what I do for a living. It was kind of fun, but not much of a challenge, really.
Which brings me to my question: If the administration’s explanation of that bizarre, unannounced flight over New York is true, then it seems like a rather preposterous length to go to get a photo that, arguably, might actually look better when faked in Photoshop. Fishy? Or just incomprehensibly inept?
Frankly, I think this is just a fabulous, blinding example of why the government is so shamelessly awful at running things. So someone decides that a cool PR shot of the President’s jet over NYC would be cool. What’s the most obvious way to get that shot? Well, you send that mofo up, dammit, along with a contingent of fighters with photographers in the copilot’s seats. So it costs $328,000 or so. That’s nothing to an organization that measures its budget in the trillions, right? Does it even occur to someone to consider a cheaper (and saner) alternative? Pfft. Why would it?
Granted, I’m not the cheapest graphic artist out there, but I’d have been happy to help the government out in this endeavor. They could have kept AF1 on the ground, saved the population of New York from nearly losing their breakfasts, and in the end gotten some arguably better promo shots. I could have even airbrushed the jet up a bit, just like they do with the supermodels on the SI swimsuit edition– taken off a few of those extra pounds here and there, maybe given it a sexy, thinning highlight along its fuselage.
I wouldn’t have charged $328,000. Heck, I’d have done it for a measly $250,000. After all, it’d be government work, right?
Conservatism Lives!
