FRA: App-less airplane photography

We didn't plan to travel this weekend. But then we discovered that our favorite hotel in Frankfurt had pretty sweet room rates. And we thought why not? We spent Saturday enjoying everything the city had to offer. And on Sunday morning, I headed to Zeppelinheim. This time around, I decided to do things differently.

You see, the Flightradar24 app has become an indispensable tool for my airplane photography to the point where it actually started making my favorite pastime — dare I say it? — less enjoyable. I realized that lately instead of taking it easy and just having fun, I'd been spending most of my time fiddling with the app, nervously trying to find out when the next interesting airplane shows up, and then maniacally following its progress.

Worse still, knowing well in advance what airplanes are coming and their ETA sucked all the anticipation out of the activity. I mean, would you enjoy fishing if you knew what fish will bite and when exactly it's going to do it? Not really, right? Same with airplanes. Sometimes, it's worth just let things happen to fully enjoy aircraft photography.

And that's exactly what I did. I didn't open the app at all, and you know what? It was fun. Instead of being glued to the screen, I watched airplanes taxiing back and forth on the airfield, observed people, and entertained idle thoughts. Whenever an airplane appeared on the horizon , not knowing if it's something interesting or not made the moment immeasurably more exciting.

So even though my catch this time was't all that impressive, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Zeppelinheim.

Sure, whenever I'm out to catch a specific aircraft, having Flightradar24 helps a lot. But it's also important not to let the tool monopolize your attention. Lesson learned.