I feel remiss if I didn’t mention something that was brought to my attention in a comment on my last post. Back in February I drove down to Vandenberg Air Force Base to photograph the launch of a test Minuteman III ICBM. This was the second one I’ve done, the last being in July last summer. These happen 3-4 times a year on just a couple of days notice, with a very long launch window, so you have to be ready to drive down and sit it out for however many hours it could take. There was one in the fall that I missed, I think I didn’t see the press release until it was already done.
So I took a long exposure photograph of the missile launching and heading out over the Pacific. I posted the photos to Twitter because there’s a lot of space nerds on there. I drove home and didn’t think much about it. Later I get a heads up that my photos got linked from an RT.com (f/k/a Russia Today) article.
The article was about the missile test, and goes on talking about increased missile tension, accusations being thrown around, and missile treaties between the US and Russia. There was my Twitter post, right in the middle of it all.
Well then! That was unexpected. The main photo at the top of the article from Reuters looked very similar to mine, and for a minute I thought they had ripped my photo off without credit. Looking closer, it’s taken at exactly the same location but shows a different launch.
Fortunately my post didn’t get any crazy attention beyond a few likes and extra followers. I didn’t have any visitors and haven’t had any new shady people try to be my friends. It makes for a good story and gets people to say “wait, what?” until I show them the article.
