Selected images from the 2016 London Airshow. Images were taken from a number of locations around the Airport with the Canon 6D and Tamron 150-600 mm lens.
Images grouped in the gallery as:
- Commercial traffic during the event
- Misc Aircraft (and a couple of Birds!)
- Heavy Military Aircraft
- F15s
- F16s
- F18s
- F22s
- Heritage Aircraft
- Snowbirds
The two birds were noticed right after photographing the arrival of the F16s, from my secret location (!!), very close to the shore of Lake Fanshawe. I had just taken an image of a routine commercial jet at altitude that was directly overhead, when I noticed something flying very high right above me – way up there. The gallery includes the original, taken at 600mm, as well as a 100% crop. It was so high up that I couldn’t tell what it was (other that it was a large bird) until I looked at it on the computer – it was that high up (very small to the naked eye!). Same with the vulture I noticed a few minuted after the eagle!
This was my first real attempt at Airshow photography (I photographed the static display at one of the London Airshows in the 90’s with slide film).
NOTE: the propellers in all these images are ‘frozen’ and I prefer it that way. There is a lot of discussion on photography sites and forums (and it is often dogmatic in tone!) how it is such a transgression to freeze propellers, lest you are not a ‘serious’ Airshow photographer. The apparent rationale is ‘it doesn’t look natural’ (and that’s fine if that is your preference), and it ‘looks like the plane will fall out of the air’. I contend that photography is capturing a moment in time, and there is nothing wrong with that being a very short moment. I would also add that freezing the whole dern plane (either jet or prop) is just as ‘not natural’ (as you don’t see it moving, as you would in real time). But having the rest of the plane frozen is generally acceptable – I’m sorry, but I see that as inconsistent . Also, in Hummingbird photography, the ‘ideal’ *is* to freeze the wings – there is no argument in that community that the it is not ‘natural’, because it is not what we usually ‘see’, nor is there concern that the Hummingbird looks ‘like it is about to fall out of the sky’. YMMV.
