On Oct. 9 and 10, San Francisco hosted its annual Fleet Week airshow, where the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels performed. Viewers watched from all over the city, with many gathering in Golden Gate Park, the Presidio and scattered vista points.

I chose to photograph Fleet Week not only because is it one of my family’s annual traditions to watch the show, but also because I wanted to challenge myself to capture extremely fast-moving subjects for event coverage. I struggled at first to adjust my camera to the right shutter speed and figure out how to predict how the planes would move before they got into frame. But as the show went on, it became easier to know generally where the planes would go and what they might do.

Photo gallery by Elizabeth van Blommestein. Van Blommestein is a high schooler producing content as a part of the The Stanford Daily’s 2021 High School Multimedia Workshop.