Getting my eye in...

With some promised upcoming Red Arrows display action approaching, I decided that a quick trip to the Clacton Airshow in order to get some practice in shooting something fast moving would be a good idea! Clacton is reasonably easy for us to travel to, and being a seafront airshow it's free admission as well, although I always either buy a programme or pop a donation in a bucket at these events - the displays you are watching are phenomenally expensive to book so in the interests of seeing them again in the future, put your hands in your pockets, people!  At Clacton a programme was just £3 - pretty reasonable considering it gives you a plan of the display area and also the timings for each of the displays as well as information about the planes you are seeing.

First step was to identify "display centre" which for the red Arrows show is where they will "centre" their close passes and synchro moves. The entire display pivots around this centre point - which is usually a large red or orange buoy or barrage of some description - so being as close to it as possible is essential for getting the best pictures you can. (There are exceptions to this however - if you ever get the chance to watch one of these displays from a hill overlooking the display area then go for it for a completely different perspective on the whole thing!) With an hour to go to start of the action I found myself a spot as close as I could manage to centre and settled myself down to wait. Plenty to occupy me in between people watching, and checking on camera settings - I set both cameras up for displays - the 40D with the 70-200mm lens and the 20D with the 300mm covers me for an "average" display, although there is one special one where I swap that 300mm for something rather shorter and wider in a bid to capture the surroundings as well as the planes themselves....this time though it was the two long lenses that were needed. I set the two cameras up to mirror one another exactly - I'm aiming to get close to identical exposure etc from each so the shots will intersperse seamlessly for online albums etc so ISO settings, aperture etc are all set identically.

The "Reds" did a super display - one of the best I've seen in a long while in fact, with some recognisable bits....

...And a lot of red, white & blue smoke....

A lovely tribute to Jon Egging and Sean Cunningham, both tragically killed whilst displaying/training with the team last year...

And finally a little fly-past over the display site trailing red, white and blue smoke.

Quite honestly, you barely noticed that they were displaying with just 7 planes rather than their trademark 9 - although obviously the classic "Diamond 9" formation was missing, there were so many new things in there what we ended up with was a vibrant, fresh display with masses to make the crowd "Ooh" and "Ahhh!" in approval. the reduced numbers also mean a LOT more close-passes from the Synchro-pair of Red 6 - Flt. Ltnt. Ben Plank & Red 7 - Flt. Ltnt. Chris Lyndon-Smith, always a crowd-pleaser and from a photography point of view plenty more chances to capture that elusive "crossover" shot....

Didn't help me much though - your timing only needs to be a split second out for you to miss the cross entirely or end up with one plane half way out of the frame, and even shooting at 6.5 frames per second, the speed those planes move at there is a LOT more chance of missing it, than the opposite!

With the Reds display over and done with, we then had the solo hawk display - just look at its fabulous livery for the 2012 display season -

...and the fabulous Battle of Britain Memorial flight, this time round made up of 2 Spitfires and a Lancaster. Always an emotive sight - and sound!

My results were wobbly at first - the sheer speed takes some getting used to again when the fastest thing you've photographed for a year or so is a rugby player! I persevered though and ended up getting some decent shots, as well as remind myself of some key tricks to getting better shots next time. Keep your eyes out on here over the next few weeks for those....weather permitting!

Robyn