The Annual Pilgrimage to Gloucestershire

Every year in July, RAF Fairford is home to the Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT for short), the largest military air show in Britain, and for the second successive year Yol and myself headed down to Gloucester to meet up with wonderful friends and take in the airshow in VIP luxury! RIAT offers a range of admission packages, and we went for the Aviation Club package, with a great viewing place, a marquee and seats, dinner and regular cuppas, and (the best perk) exclusive parking which doesn't take four hours to get into. It may be expensive, but it's worth every penny!

RIAT is a hog's heaven for me, it's a day of watching some serious hardware taking to the skies, and it's a day of getting my camera out and shooting like a nutter. Last year I shot 1700 exposures in one day, this year I topped it with over 1800, and edited them down to about 120 photos.

The day itself started out wet and cloudy, and it looked like it was all set to be a washout. We took in a section of the static display before taking cover in the marquee and waiting for the worst of the rain to subside:




Even the mightiest of aircraft landing on the runway were obscured by the rain, as the spectactors huddled to keep dry and wait for the weather to change:



The first of the aircraft to take part in the flying display didn't even get to fly, all they were cleared to do were taxi-passes, but this still gave us the opportunity to get our lenses out and shoot some of the world's greatest aircraft:



But before long the weather turned, and then the real flying could begin. Shooting aircraft in flight is always a tricky thing; starting with airport shoots is always a good move, but when it comes to airshows you're dealing with aircraft that are smaller and faster than your average commercial airliner! So it's a balance between keeping focus, depth of field, and exposure. Some you win, some you lose, and in my own experience I was getting one good shot for every 100 or so exposures. But the ones I got, I'm extremely proud of!:





The full set of photos from RIAT 2011 can be seen here on Flickr - thanks for looking!

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