Samantha Storey in the New York Times:
Raul Roa has been a general-assignment photographer in Los Angeles for 20 years. He covers everything. The overturned tractor-trailer on I-5. The water polo meet at Glendale High. The protests in downtown Los Angeles after Ferguson. He does it all.
But the geography of his beat — north of Los Angeles — and where it is in relation to his home in Whittier, south of there, has unexpectedly birthed a hobby. Every day as he drives home, he sees planes swooping down to land at Los Angeles International Airport.
He lives right under the airport’s flight path.
It would not be a stretch to say that some people might find this irksome — the noise alone — but Mr. Roa, 49, has an eye, of course, and his eye, one commute home 18 months ago, turned to a ripe full moon perched in the sky, plump as could be. He noticed how perfectly silhouetted the planes were as they flew past the moon. He was driving along the Pomona Freeway. He took the next exit, which led him to the parking lot of the Montebello mall.
“I waited for another plane to go by,” Mr. Roa said. “It was nighttime. Clear. Two or three planes went by and I snapped a couple of shots. And there it was. I had it.”
More here.