Aviation Photography Workshop 1st December 2011

Hi Everyone

Well, it happened, Coral Inspire's first Aviation Photography Workshop, what an excellent day.  The weather forecast was bad for the day and upto Wednesday evening I thought I would have to cancel it.  But the day dawned and the sky was mainly clear, so with camera bag packed I was off and collected 2 of  the workshop participants en-route.  Chris was to pick up the third and we would meet at RAF Coningsby some 1.5 hours later.

We went in to the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight for the 11am tour and had a very informative 1.5 hours.  The BBMF museum is not actually run by the RAF, its run by Lincolnshire County Council which I wasn't aware of before going in.  More info here... http://www.raf.mod.uk/bbmf/visitorscentre/  

We were shown the Lancaster Bomber and introduced to the loneliest place on earth, the position of the rear gunner.  Basically if you were in that seat and the plane was shot down, thats pretty much it, you would have 17 seconds (if you chose) to try and unbuckle, climb through a hatch, through another door, get your parachute on and make it down to the door to escape.  Now given that the plane corkscrew's down because of the shape and dynamics, that the fuselage would be full of smoke rendering it pitch black, that the plane was nose down so you were trying to walk down vertically that wasn't an option.  Most of the rear gunners we were told either stayed with the plane or spun the turret and hit the buckle falling to their deaths, given that their average age was around 24/25, that was a chilling moment of thought for me.

We then headed out to the Park and View area, a space specifically for aviation enthusiasts to go to photograph the jets moving around on the base, from here I was able to talk the 3 participants of the course, John Palmer, Stuart Dobson and Alan Janaszek through the first basic steps of aviation photography.  We broke at 2pm for lunch, lunch was at the White Bull Inn at Coningsby, the food here and hospitality was excellent http://www.bedandbreakfastdirect.co.uk/show_cotdetails.asp?cid=1112

Here I am pointing out a couple of Typhoon lining up to take to the air

Alan Janaszek working with his camera to set it up with the most appropriate settings possible

Here, Alan is just checking over the settings before the noise starts

During lunch we took the opportunity to look through the images that the guys had taken and I was able to offer some corrective advice, critique on framing the jets and composing the shots, I also briefed them on what the afternoon session would include and we headed for the back of the base where we could capture the jets landing and taxiing.

From the area at the back of the base, the light was just giving enough of a glow to get some reflection from the jets as they came in and we were treat to a huge number of touch and go's from the Typhoons as they returned from their sorties.  At this point the light had diminished to such an extent and made for perfect timing to head back to the main park and view for some long exposure, tripod based photography.  This time, the guys were able to shoot the aircraft with their light trails making for some interesting night photography and light patterns.

At about 6.30pm we decided that the day was about done for the jets were all back in and didn't show much chance of going back out, so we stopped by the fenceline and photographed the jets sat under the lights and the engineers working on them to get them ready for their next sortie.

All in all everyone had a great day, something that I will definitely be repeating after Christmas, here are a couple of comments from the day courtesy of Stuart and John.

"Hi Kevin

Many thanks for yesterday. I really enjoyed it.

I must congratulate you on the way you organised the day, and the
information sheet was excellent.

May your business continue to flourish.

Regards Stuart

A satisfied customer."

"Hi Kevin

 

Many thanks for yesterdays workshop, I enjoyed it very much, did something I had not tried before, learnt something new, which I will try again and hopefully do better.

Once again many thanks to you, also please pass my thanks to Chris.

A great day and great company.

 

Cheers

 

John"

Anyone wanting to know more about these workshops, details can be found on my website.  www.coral-inspire.com/store

Thanks to everyone involved for their support and for making it such a great day.

Kev Woodcock