Recently the RNZAF was based at Rotorua Airport for their Operation Wise Owl training exercise. This gave some opportunities to see (and hear!) the Texan 2 aircraft in flight. I made a couple of trips to the airport to try and capture some different “birds in flight” images.

Aircraft photography has its own challenges. Initial reaction can be to set a fast shutter speed to freeze the motion of the fast moving planes. With propellor driven craft this freezes the propellor and gives a static feeling so a slower shutter speed to allow some motion blur is more pleasing.

Being a relatively busy regional airport there was a regular traffic of domestic flights while waiting for the RNZAF flights. Conditions even suited some mechanical Birds on White images.

I seem to have been obsessed since childhood with flying things. My ceiling was littered with model aircraft as a boy and I spent a lot of time modelling and flying control line planes and dreaming of being able to afford radio-controlled models. A lot of time spent flying in C130 Hercules transporters and Puma helicopters in South Africa, Namibia and southern Angola in the 1980s gave me a special appreciation for the capabilities of these military aircraft. Sitting in a helicopter as it winds up is still a unique and exciting experience.

While exciting to watch and photograph these machines the experience is tinged with past traumatic memories so I could not help but photograph another bird on white without any negative feelings attached. It intrigues me how different my emotional responses are when looking at the 2 types of images. Both induce marvel and wonder but the bird image is wrapped in a feeling of peace and calm which I hadn’t fully appreciated until juxtaposing them and writing this. Maybe that why I am driven to keep pursuing them.

Photos with Nikon Z7 (Sparrow, Squirrel, lower Texan and Q300) and Nikon D850 (upper Texan and ATR 72) with Nikon 80-400mm lens.