View allAll Photos Tagged BeAHero
I wanted to test out my new GoPro, so out to the backyard. First, the foreground was underexposed, so I raised it up in ACR. There was a lot of fine-tuning to get the trees and the bushes to look the way I wanted. In addition, the sky was blown out pretty bad. I wasn't even going to share the photo, but then I thought, "What could be more Slider Sunday than sky replacement" So, I fired up my old copy of Skylum Luminar and found a sky that would work. The masking is incredible considering what it had to start with. There are a few masking problems, and the chromatic aberrations are pretty bad. I like how it turned out. Happy Slider Sunday.
Flying By A Journey Of Life, A Life Of Journey Flying By - IMRAN™ (Part 5) - (My 124th Flickr Explore!)
Before it is finally time for me to take the solo flight to meet my maker, as I wrote in Part 4 ( www.facebook.com/MyIMRAN/posts/429800292481555 ), there were solo journeys from the start of my life. I was turning 7 living in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1969. That was the year humans landed on the moon, as I had watched on a Germann AEG Telefunken black and white TV in our home live via satellite in Karachi.
I had gone there to live with my amazing maternal grandmother for the sake of better schools than were found in towns where my late father, a civil engineer, would get posted with my mom early in his career. It would’ve been my first birthday away from my parents. School had just ended for summer break when my dad called my grandmother and aunts. He wanted to give me more than one of the greatest gifts.
He asked them to put me on a Pakistan International Airlines flight to Lahore… as an unaccompanied child! I would become the first person in my family to travel by air - and that too as a child alone!
Everyone was scared and worried. They tried to convince him that it was beyond daring and dangerous. My dad’s words, “He’ll be fine!” have rung true for the half century since then. And I’m so glad he did and said that.
To this day I recall being handed over to the PIA stewardess, who then took me to what would become a lifelong habit & need - a window seat in the front. I even kept the circular bright tag that was pinned to my coat lapel that day. “Unaccompanied Child” it said.
But even more than 50 years after that first flight, even after having loved my HappilySingle™ but incredibly-loved solo life, even decades after losing my beloved mother and father, at no moment do I ever feel alone. I always feel, and know, and savor feeling I am always that little boy with my doting parents always by my side.
That is the love and knowledge I will live with -- until the day I am buried by their side, and God willing fly to heaven, an unaccompanied child on his final flight to stand next to his parents for all eternity. Thank you Abu, Ami, and Almighty Allah for everything.
{To Be Continued}
© 2022 IMRAN™
#IMRAN #autobiography #Pakistan #flying #aviation #aircraft #history #lifestory #inspiration #motivation #goals #realLife #BeAHero #LiveLife #travel #moonlanding #parents #afterlife #Allah
One of many UNESCO World Heritage sites situated in Ayutthaya, Thailand.
Follow me on Instagram! ⇒ Daniel Go
I'm very lucky to be a companion of this traveling GoPro. Such wanderlust is very common among GoPros but they don't befriend everyone.
Flying By A Journey Of Life, A Life Of Journey Flying By - IMRAN™
(Part 1). Like any little boy, or many a grown man, I had always wanted to be a fighter pilot, since the start. Wanting to fly was in my genes and soul from the day I started the journey of life, through my taking off for new lands and new adventures over the next decades, and even now.
With several uncles in the air force, I always dreamed of joining the Pakistan Air Force before I moved to the USA. When Top Gun, the movie, came out, it instantly became one of my favorite movies, with Danger Zone becoming one of the 10 anthem songs in the soundtrack of my life.
I even wrote a script treatment for Top Gun 2 in the early 1990s and sent it off to some Hollywood executive's wastebasket! And, now an actual sequel, Maverick, is coming out literally the weekend of my upcoming birthday.
This photo was taken nearly 20 years ago, when my dear pilot friend Roger E. and his wife Joyce picked up me and my then beloved Christie from Palm Beach Airport. The girls sat in the rear passenger seats, and Roger let me pilot his beautiful Piper aircraft to Sebring, Florida. As we were on final approach, race cars roared around the track beneath us. I treated us all to lunch, and then we explored the hangars near the famous race track there.
Part 2 www.facebook.com/MyIMRAN/posts/427904326004485
© 2022 IMRAN™
#IMRAN #autobiography #Pakistan #USA #PAF #USAF #flying #aviation #aircraft #history #lifestory #inspiration #motivation #goals #TopGun #Maverick #realLife #BeAHero #LiveLife #travel #friends #livelifetothefullest #Sebring #Florida
My little granddaughter is 3 today. I am usually with her for her birthday but couldn't be there in Cornwall today but will be there in a few weeks time. We will celebrate her birthday again then. Can't wait to see her.
Thank goodness for Skype. She had to show me her Catboy balloons and decorations :) Catboy is her fravourite cartoon at the moment.
This photo isn't mine. It's one of many my son Matt took today.
Flying By A Journey Of Life, A Life Of Journey Flying By - IMRAN™ (Part 4)
(See part 3 at www.facebook.com/MyIMRAN/posts/428751555919762 ). Known as a maverick all my life, even before Tom Cruise's character Maverick in Top Gun made it a more commonly known 'name', I retain that spirit to this day by the grace of the Almighty. I hope to never lose that zest for life. I do that even more as life is flying by faster than even the fastest plane I used to read about as a kid.
That plane was the Bell X-2 Starbuster, which had it first flight exactly ten years before I was born. It reached a maximum speed of ~2100 mph, with a service ceiling of 126,000 feet! Also, in the period of history my existence on earth aligned with, the late American hero aviator and astronaut Senator John Glenn also became the first American to orbit earth. That was literally 3 months before I landed on earth and saw the world with my own eyes for the first time.
But no matter how deep in space an astronaut goes, or by what Mach factor the speed of sound an aviator blows, or how gently a small aircraft a hobby pilot speeds and slows, it all begins with the most fundamental of flying lessons often in he simplest of aircraft. This photo captures the essence of that scientific reality that gives us wings to fly and experience what was once the realm of science fiction. Until one day we all, pilot and non-pilot alike, hop on a one way flight to the heavens.
Many of us will choose, if God wills it as I do, to be buried in solid ground near the feet of my beloved parents' graves. But even then our spirits will soar far beyond the skies. I want to live a life that, when that time comes, my soul is ready to mingle into the brilliant yet invisible universe of dark matter, light heaven, and infinite streams of stardust. I choose to live a life that makes that moment of eternity become a flight faster and farther than the X-2 Starbuster,... the solo flight of Me, Myself, and I.... StarDuster!
{To Be Continued}
© 2022 IMRAN™
#IMRAN #autobiography #Pakistan #USA #PAF #USAF #flying #aviation #aircraft #history #lifestory #inspiration #motivation #goals #TopGun #Maverick #realLife #BeAHero #LiveLife #travel #friends #livelifetothefullest #Sebring #Florida
I've been dying to get out and shoot some star trails with the GoPro Hero4 since the moment I got it. I was finally able to take a short road trip during a full moon.
One of the stops on the trip was Giant Rock in Landers, CA. It is possibly the largest freestanding rock in the world. I figured out where North was and looked for a shot. I decided to set up low to the ground where some shot gun shells were left behind by some previous tourists. I set the GoPro to shoot 30second exposure continuously. I was able to get about an hours worth before another car came to check out the rock. After shooting its just stacking in Photoshop and processing as normal.
Dear Friends! I'm glad to introduce to you not only this wonderful shot but my photo notes! You can find it here: stampsy.com/user/62067/latest/25536
It's new format of representation for me, and I'll be glad if it help to you discover something new or unusual in Russia or their people.
I'm sorry that there is no english version... If you interesting in text you can use translator or ask me. Have a nice reading. Alexander
Flying By A Journey Of Life, A Life Of Journey Flying By - IMRAN™ (Part 3)
In part 2 ( www.facebook.com/MyIMRAN/posts/427904326004485 ) I wrote about the need for speed. Even the yellow tail on one of the USAF planes was the same color combination as my Yamaha Enduro from my engineering university days. But there were other connections to both my passions and to my life story.
This was a place where warbirds, general aviation aircraft, and ground speed demons were all on display.
Even though I got rid of my father's beloved but dreadfully unreliable British car the day he had flown to USA for higher studies, the heavy-as-a-brick stainless steel Jaguar hood ornament we took off it is are still kept as a family heirloom in Pakistan.
So it was interesting to see the (I am sure) slightly faster and slightly cooler looking and surely slightly more reliable Jaguar racing cars and aircraft right where I was standing. It was even more coincidental and ironic that the green and white colors of my motherland, Pakistan, adorned the British race car and the tail of another of the planes from my adopted homeland, America.
If only there had been a Yamaha motorbike there at that time, that would have been so cool too. But kidding aside, what a joy to be able to experience all of that, in one moment, in one spot, and even more so, in one amazing lifetime.
What a blessing to experience life and all these interconnected experiences even half a century and half a globe apart. What a gift of God to have lived with more true unconditional love of family and loved ones than even a giant movie star like Tom Cruise and others ever had or could ever have.
Even as I leave the motor of life humming, ready to roar speeding to the next adventure or jumping off the deck into overdrive of adventures, I've been to, and still love thriving in.... The Danger Zone... even when everything is at a standstill.
{To Be Continued}
© 2022 IMRAN™
#IMRAN #autobiography #Pakistan #USA #PAF #USAF #flying #aviation #aircraft #history #lifestory #inspiration #motivation #goals #TopGun #Maverick #realLife #BeAHero #LiveLife #travel #friends #livelifetothefullest #Sebring #Florida #driving #racing #Jaguar #Yamaha