Watch the birdie……

I started this post a few weeks ago and never got to actually finish it let alone upload it. This is more of a “Story behind the image” paragraph as opposed to a normal blog post.

My love for aviation photography hit its peak in the mid 2000’s. You will know about my obsession with aircraft and aviation if you have read my blog before but if you havent please take a look here . The hours I have spent at airports watching aircraft, logging registrations and taking photographs have accumulated and if I had the means to calculate a total I think it would make grim reading. Over this time I have seen some strange things, some funny events and some sad events too. I have seen Deer, Foxes, Rabbits, Hares, Kestrels, Falcons, Buzzards, Rats, Mice, Stoats and Weasels to name some in the animal category. I have seen fires and floods, bad landings and good landings and believe it or not crashes too…and before you ask they all walked away.

It always pays to keep your eyes open when photographing a subject as there is so much more going on around you. In the case of the aircraft above it was just another day at Leeds Bradford Airport and the Britannia Airways flight to Palma was preparing to depart on runway 14 to head south. One of the key things about aircraft photography that I discovered later in my years of being interested in this hobby is that you should make this personal. Many fellow enthusiasts concentrate on preparing images for upload to various aviation related websites where there are rules and regulations that must be conformed to. I prefer to do “my own thing” and upload either to my personal site, Flickr or on to this blog. This way I am my own judge and therefore set my own rules (if any at all). The image above was taken on the 8th May 2006 (just seven years ago…..seems like yesterday doesn’t it?) and in the midst of my time of conformation.

Like I just stated, at this time I was conforming to rules and uploading to a couple of the major aviation related websites. The initial image that I took, which would have matched the criteria of the particular site was just of the aircraft and quite normal, head on and aimed strictly at an aviation audience etc.

I noticed the Swallow doing its own personal acrobatic performance for the captain and first officer whilst I was looking through the lens. If I am completely honest it was probably more luck than judgement and the matter of timing was pure coincidence. In the closer image you can see the two pilots have clearly seen the bird and as we all know, birds and aircraft are not a good combination. It was quite a hot day and there was a lot of heat haze as it was three o clock in the afternoon as a result the close up image of the aircraft nose was never going to be the best quality. However, I was very happy with the actual composition.

As photographers we all dream of capturing that one image that stands out from the rest. You know what I mean, the one that just screams of the photographer. A number of years ago I managed to capture an image of a cat drinking from a swimming pool in the Canary Islands. I was sat by the pool one early morning and the feline walked in like he owned the place. He sat down by the edge of the pool and craned his neck to reach the water. I held my shutter finger until just the right second when the cat’s tongue made contact with the water. The image was acquired by Pedigree Pet Foods back in the eighties when it was a lot harder to market your photography but not as easy to capture something special.

The image is a scan from a negative hence the quality is quite poor by todays standards. However, it’s just  a personal record for me as it was one of my first sales.

Always carry your camera…. you never know what you are going to see.

Thank you for reading, as always all comments, good or bad are welcome.

Take care.

3 months of nothing..then 3 days of everything

I sit here at my desktop PC, breakfast is cooking (Porridge in case you wondered) and I have about 90 minutes to eat and turn out a blog that is worth reading and somehow explains my absence. I

3 months of nothing…then 3 days of everything That’s just how it goes isn’t it….typical. It’s not as if we have had marvelous weather over the last three months in the United Kingdom because we havent…oh unless you think that snow and ice is the be all and end all and you are an up and coming Antarctic explorer. My blogging has just slipped in to the shadows ever so slightly as my ventures swallowed up all my spare time leaving me with a double whammy. No time to edit the actual images therefore no time to blog them as well . Ok, I managed to get the snow shots on here with very brief explanation of that particular day except that was only half of it. There was more…

Yes, March 29th was two days ago and since then I havent stopped. What was supposed to follow on from my post “After the worst of the snow” was the rest of my day. Using a very familiar phrase on No More Dead Pixels this is where it all went Pete Tong. The Picture count for 2013 is low…somewhere in the 3000 region (That’s 5K lower than 2012 for the record). But the last three days have seen over 1000 images pass from CF Card to PC and a queue forming at the editing office. I don’t appear to have the time to edit the images quick enough to get them on to my blog to support to the words. I like to be up to date and I am failing…..miserably……yes, miserably.

Back to the 29th and after the random mad dash chasing snow images I even squeezed in another photo session that afternoon…this time at the airport. I know, I know….its my old haunt but every once in a while you need a quick fix don’t you. Anyway it was a prelude. A warm up session as an invitation to meet up with some fellow photographers on Saturday could never be turned down. Karl Wilson is a great image maker whom I met at the Great Yorkshire Stair Climb last year. Please take a look at Karls photography on his website here. Karl is a published and renowned photographer from Leeds and fancied his chances at some aviation photography. A subject matter that has passed across my lens many times.

More on that in a subsequent blog……

So, just so you know I havent gone away and you don’t think No More Dead Pixels is actually “Dead” here I am. Your visits have been truly welcomed so please come back for more. I could never imagined 10,000 hits in the two and half months I have been doing this and for that I am grateful.

The sunset by the way was a lazy one. I took it from the bedroom window last night. Well…..it looked nice.

Back later……