I use this one as the banner for @aWildLupi, for my blog's Twitter page, and if i'd been able to afford to pay for the redesign, the blog itself.
I was on that beach crossover at Playalinda with everyone else pictured, tight zoomed in on the pad, and then something inside me said, with less than 10 minutes to launch, to abandon that and set up again in the parking lot, framed on the crossover.
I didn't know if this would work.
It did. This was the CRS-21 launch, on December 6th, 2020.
This probably tops the charts in terms of "unexpected/turned out better."
This was the first launch where I trucked out on my bike to shoot it. I didn't live here yet, this was still me living with family, but we'd vacationed to Cocoa Beach every summer since 2014.
I'd biked to the Cocoa Beach Pier for it, hence the elevation. I even did a scouting run the night before to prove out that yes, you can see the launchpad through the high-rises from here.
I didn't realize tripods were prohibited on the pier, so I had to stabilize the camera against the handrail of the pier and hope for the best. And it worked out real well.
Every picture here is one of my favorites, I was so glad to see the last Delta IV Medium, but this one specifically was unexpected. I couldn't have dreamed of that cloud framing the arc of it so well.
Apparently I never made a post on @aWildLupi for this launch, I'll do that later and link back, but you can find all the pictures I took from that launch on my gallery site!
I was goign to do more of this thread, but techincal breakdowns killed all my steam