Things I love to photograph Part 3

Hello again!

Welcome to part 3 of this series about my photography hobby :). Read the first part here, and the second part here.

In this post I want to talk to you about what interests me in photographing planes, helicopters, automobiles and I also added some bike shots 🙂

Before I want to talk about what interests me in photographing planes, I need to go way back when I was just a small kid, and tell you how I got interested in planes in general :).

When I was 12 years old, my parents took me, and one of my brothers on a one month trip through the United States, and since we live in the Netherlands, we had to go there by plane. We flew from schiphol with KLM in a big Boeing 747, and we landed at LAX (Los Angels). At schiphol and LAX, I was mesmerized by all the amazing planes just waiting there, to take people to places all over the world on their holiday, or just for work.

Thats when my interest really started, and over the years, I read a lot of books about planes (Didn’t have the internet yet at that time), which I got from the local library. Mostly with lots of pictures in it tbh :). I even tried to get into the Anthony Fokker school here in the Netherlands, but I can’t remember why that didn’t work out. To long ago :). I did visit the school, and got some small booklets on several airplanes, and helicopters.

In the mid 80’s, I also got some history books on aviation from Publisher Lekturama which I still own to this day, so they must be around 30 years old :). And they are filled with amazing photographs, and facts on the history of flight.

I also saw a lot of movies about the Vietnam War during the 80’s and that sparked my interest in helicopters. So I also bought a book about the history of Helicopters, which I also still own… I feel like a hoarder tbh, now that I think about it.

I didn’t photograph many planes during the time I still had a regular camera, but that changed when I got my Canon EOS 100D, and got a 18-270mm lens from Tamron, so ideal for getting photographs from planes and helicopters in flight. And especially from planes and helicopters during air shows.

So the first Air show I visited with my new camera setup, was the Air force Days event at Air force base Gilze Rijen in 2014. Every 3 years, there are 2 events form the Air force, and during that time they present themselves at different bases.

Gilze Rijen was not that far away for me to go there, so I hopped in my car, and when I got there, found a good spot for me to photograph the different shows during the day. I took a few 100 images that day, and maybe a dozen or so turned out good enough to use :).

There was also a place, where you could walk around several helicopters and planes, and that’s where I saw this amazing AH-64 Apache helicopter surrounded by people, so I needed to get up close to get a nice shot without anyone in it. And I think I did a decent job tbh.

The next shot is from a Mikojan-Goerevitsj MiG-29, and when I was walking around the plane, I stopped at the front of the plane, and was amazed at how awesome it looked. So I shot this image. It really feels like its coming straight at you. Wasn’t too happy with the trees at the right side, but I did not want to butcher the image that much, to remove the trees.

The first actual aerial show I saw at Gilze Rijen was the flight of 2 Supermarine Spitfires escorting a B-25 Mitchell bomber. The B-25 is famous for its bombing run on Tokyo in 1942, which was led by James Harold Doolittle, and was unique because the planes took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, which was not designed to handle such large planes.

I took the next shot when they were flying in line with the landing strip, so I got a good view of the planes.

The Spitfires are famous for the Battle of Britain of course, which lasted for almost 4 months in 1940, and around 450 Spitfires were vital in winning this airspace battle.

I got a great shot of a single Spitfire, which was just banking to the left, so I got a nice view of its shape. The insignia’s on the plane represent the country its from. Click here if you want to know more about warplane insignia’s.

This is a shot of a Supermarine Spitfire that had just landed. This one has Invasion stripes on its wings and fuselage, to make it stand out more during battles, and to prevent a friendly fire incident, or shoot down.

The next aerial show was from the Russian Mikojan-Goerevitsj MiG-29, which performed some amazing manoeuvres mid flight. I got a few decent shots in, and the next shot is from the plane doing a nice fly by for the audience. I opted to leave the large open space in the image to give the plane some movement room to the left.

The Mig 29 has some weird camouflage to fool the enemy, which can be seen in the next shot, where you can see they painted a cockpit on the underside of the plane.

The next few shots were taken during the aerobatic show from the Spanish Air Force’s ASPA aerobatic team, who gave an amazing performance with 5 identical EC-120 Eurocopters. I had my Shutterspeed at max 1/4000 second, so the rotors are frozen in time now. I should have opted for a slower shutter speed tbh, to give a more dynamic look to the helicopters. So a lesson learned 🙂

Click here if you want to know more about this amazing team, and their Eurocopters!

Click here to see the Eurocopters in flight. The first part of the movie anyway 😉

In 2015, I went to another aerial event called “Hamilton, Volkel in de Wolken”, which was held in, surprise, surprise, Volkel. This was the first year for me to go there, and as it turns out, also the last, because they are not allowed to hold aerial shows anymore due to regulations :(.

Anyway, I saw some amazing shows that day, with stunt planes and some military planes. I took around 700 images that day, but I will only share a few of those, so don’t worry!

The above and below image are shots I took from the aerobatic show from 2 Silence Twisters, which are ultra light planes designed to look like the Spitfires from WW2. They are both decorated with LED lighting to show off during a show in the dark.

The next two shots were taken at the show from an Extra EA-300SC aircraft, which is a two-seat aerobatic monoplane, designed for heart stopping manouevres.

As you can see, the propeller seems in motion now giving more dynamic to the shot, because I had set the shutterspeed at 1/500 sec.

The last shot from Volkel is from 2 F16’s doing a fly by.

Besides photographing planes and helicopters, I also happen to like shooting cars and bikes, but not during a show, but just as anyone would see them on the streets in the cities or towns.

The above shot I took in Dordrecht, when I happened to see this cargo bike, standing in front of a nice wall.

While visiting the Zuiderpark in Rotterdam, I came across this Cargo part of a cargo bike, chained to a tree, and it really looked cool with the nice green backdrop of the trees and grass.

During a trip in Nunspeet, this Volkswagen Beetle really stood out to me, and I knew I had to take an image of it. I gave it an old school look in Adobe Lightroom.

The above picture is the last image for this post, and it was taken during a trip to Veghel, and this really cool looking Fiat 600 just jumped out to me, with its contrasting colors red and white.

Sorry for the long post, but I had so many images to share that I really like 🙂

I hope you enjoyed this post about my photography. Feel free to leave a reply, and don’t forget to share the post if you enjoyed it!

Kind regards,

J.