Legends of the sky

By PA Team

18 July 2011 11:09

Practical Photography’s Test & Technique Editor Darren Harbar takes us through a day's shooting at the Flying Legends air show.  It's not all about the planes, you know...

In my younger days (quite a few years back), I started going to air displays with my Dad and snapping a few photographs. Now, it’s on a professional basis but I’m still taking plenty of aviation photographs. It’s vintage aviation that floats my boat, and weekends don’t come any bigger than Flying Legends. Every year, The Fighter Collection (based at the Imperial War Museum (IWM) Duxford), organises the Flying Legends air display. The scale of this show is immense, with aircraft coming from across the world, including some specially shipped in from Australia and the USA. I spent three days at Duxford the other weekend, covering what turned out to be a very eventful show.

Having recharged my camera batteries and downloaded the few practice images from the Friday, it was back to Duxford on the Saturday morning for day one of the show. It was an early start – I arrived at the airfield for 7.30am – but thankfully the bacon roll trader was frying early, so my breakfast needs and a coffee were first on the agenda.

Just to show that my air display photographic tasks are not all just aircraft related, my first job was to capture an image of the IWM Airspace hangar showing plenty of visitors, for PR use. I couldn’t show individual faces, so I opted for a long exposure technique to blur the people in the shot. This was a job for a tripod and an ND filter. I merged four images in order to get more people into the shot.

IWM Airspace hangar
(Canon EOS 1D Mark IV, Canon 24-70mm L @ 24mm, f/16 Bulb exposure (25sec), ISO 100)

As you can imagine, flying display images took the lion’s share of space on my memory card over the two days. The weather wasn’t bad, but a grey backdrop wasn’t ideal for helping the aircraft stand out. Partial metering helps keep some definition between the aircraft and the sky, especially when the aircraft is polished silver like this Mustang. A shutter speed of 1/320sec is enough to help get sharp images, but also allows some propeller movement to give the image some movement. Panning is a critical element of photographing aircraft, especially when they have propellers on the front. You don’t want to freeze the action, as the shot looks unnatural.

Mustang
(Canon EOS 1D Mark IV, Canon 400mm DO, f/11, 1/320sec, ISO 100)

Just to make life more difficult, I like to try to get a complete propeller disk on the front of the aircraft, which isn’t easy. It takes a combination of a very slow shutter speed and some accurate panning. But when it all comes together, it’s worth the effort. The yellow propeller tips deliver a nice circle at the front of the aircraft and there’s plenty of background blur to show the aircraft is travelling at speed. On top of all that, my smooth panning has delivered a sharp image.

Propeller circle
(Canon EOS 1D Mark IV, Canon 400mm DO, f/13, 1/80sec, ISO 100)

With just five hours of sleep – thanks to a monster image download from the Saturday preventing me getting to my much-needed bed – it was back to Duxford for 7.30am on the Sunday. The re-enactors were first on my agenda. These period dressed enthusiasts make great photographic subjects, especially against the aircraft. Not all re-enactors were dressed in military uniforms and holding guns. These three young ladies are the Manhattan Dolls, who had flown in from the USA to sing at the show. Not wishing to miss an opportunity, I arranged to get the girls out in front of the B-17 ‘Sally B’ for some pictures. My trusty reflector and able assistant James came in handy here!

The Manhattan Dolls
(Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II, Canon 24-70mm L @ 24mm, f/5.6, 1/320sec, ISO 100)

Air displays don’t always go to plan, and sometimes, unfortunately, accidents happen. A landing accident resulted in this lovely Triplane ending up on its nose, and I captured this image to show the human element of such incidents. The pilot was unharmed and is seen to the right of this shot. After I had put my camera away for the day, a mid-air collision between the Mustang pictured earlier in this blog and a Skyraider led to the loss of the Mustang. Thankfully the Skyraider was able to land, and the pilot of the Mustang was able to safely bail out before the aircraft was lost.

Crashed Triplane
(Canon EOS 1D Mark IV, Canon 400mm DO, f/11, 1/200sec, ISO 100)

I left Duxford in a sombre mood following two rather sad accidents, but happy that nobody had been hurt. Flying Legends was a superb airshow, with plenty of great photographic opportunities. It may well take me a few months to edit all the pictures!

If you have photographs from the Flying Legends display or any other airshow, upload them to our dedicated Aviation Gallery and share them with the users of Photo answers.