A challenge!

I’ve shot a lot of air-to-air images in my time, but none have been as challenging as my shoot a few weeks back! I was tasked with photographing an RAF Hawk trainer, alongside a WWI Bristol F2b Fighter from The Shuttleworth Collection. The problem is that, the Bristol Fighter fly’s at a maximum speed of around 85mph, and the Hawk has a minimum speed of 140mph with the gear and flaps down. This means that the only way to get both in the same shot, is to have the Hawk do a fly by. In normal circumstances, I would use a fast shutter speed to ‘Freeze’ the Hawk as it flew past. However.. a fast shutter speed will freeze the propeller on the F2b, so I had to find a happy medium, that allowed a bit of prop movement, but also kept the Hawk from blurring as it flew past. I’m happy that it worked out, as there was a lot of planning involved and some great flying by all the pilots involved. 🙂