Birthday snaps

[Tim McLelland]

Seen as it's still April and I was digging through some shots I had loaded on Photobucket, I thought these might be of interest to some of you folks. Happy 90th and all that...

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y146/Shefftim/3seven.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y146/Shefftim/XH558.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y146/Shefftim/Untitled-1.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y146/Shefftim/Redarrows-1inv.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y146/Shefftim/3one.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y146/Shefftim/3three.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y146/Shefftim/3eight.jpg


I got loads more if you like...:)

[Strangelove PhD]

:) I like :)

[Dominoe]

Ditto "I like". Any helicopters?

[Tim McLelland]

Got some Griffin and Merlin shots somewhere, maybe a SeaKing and Chinook too if I can find em!:)

[seekayess]

Excellent stuff there, Tim M!! :ok::ok:

[Shack37]

All I see are little rectangles with X's in them?:O

[Duncan D'Sorderlee]

Excellent photo's - even if they are (mostly) F3s!:p

Duncs:ok:

[glad rag]

Nock ien bittè :ok:

Feeling strangely sentimental now........................

[buoy15]

Hi Tim
Have you got one of a truly "Multi-Role" ac such as Nimrod, rather than the regular Air Clues selection, which always featured at least 3 shots of Yawnado

[Dysonsphere]

Hmmm nice piccys wish I had your access

[Old Ned]

The most beautiful shot of 558 I have seen - many thanks.

Pip pip ON

[Tim McLelland]

...okay, here's a Nimrod, complete with accompanying "Yawnados":)

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y146/Shefftim/IMG_1375-01.jpg?t=1209256112

Found some other shots too which I'll add soon as I can. Hope you like 'em;)

[bakseetblatherer]

Can anyone tell me what it says on the side of the tremblers F3, just below the cockpit?

[Tim McLelland]

It says "O Bandeirante 3" - seems it refers to a similarly-named Spitfire flown by 111 during WWII:)

[Duncan D'Sorderlee]

Tim,

That's more like it!:D

Duncs:ok:

[TEEEJ]

Lovely work, Tim! Superb capture on the Vulcan. Yes, please post more!

:ok:

Cheers

TJ

[UpShutter]

They look almost good enough for the RAF to use in an anniversary book.

[Tim McLelland]

good one!:ok: Actually I was thinking more like maybe they're too good (having seen the book)?! I'd say it was a disappointment but actually it was pretty-much as I expected to be...


Plotfinder Yep, they're all my photographs from my collection, taken myself.

[glad rag]

Tim, your shots are superb. Thank's for sharing some of them.

glad rag.

[Double Zero]

Tim,

As an aerial photographer myself I must say " Good Stuff " !

I couldn't help laughing at the shot of Tornado & Nimrod - wasn't there an incident on exercise years ago, just after the Falklands when the Aim-9L was flavour of the month, when a couple of Tornado's forgot about that and overshot the Nimrod, only to be lined up & theoretically shot down ?!

DZ

[cornish-stormrider]

Lovely pics Tim.

Next question is.......?

Where is the station in the inverted sparrows picture?

AND why aren't goose and maverick below them?

[MadMart]

The bend in the A15 gives it away.......

And wasn't it a Mig29..... I mean a Black with a red star Northrop T29 Talon below Maverick and Goose...:cool:

[goudie]

The bend in the A15 gives it away.......


Sunny Scampton. The station badge of a bow and arrow was perfect for depicting the bend, (in what was, a perfect example of roman road,) and the Vulcan, of course, being the arrow. Apparantly the badge was designed by the W/Cmdr. Admin when the Station re-opened in '58

[davejb]

DZero,
a good few years ago, post Falklands, my captain (best said using a 'Bluebottle' voice, that last bit) was ex-F4's. He used to like arranging 'fighter affil' where various fighters would come out to hack the big brown target down, having trained all us rear crew monkeys to call 'top up/top down' and so forth from any convenient window - especially the beams and martel. He positively delighted in calling sidewinder kills on overeager fast jet pilots who were unaware of how tight a corner a dirrty Nimrod could turn, then reverse back behind an overshooting fighter.

It happened quite a lot, in fact, is the answer to your question. In a shooting war I suspect the opposition would twig what was going on rather quickly...

Our other defensive tricks included the whole crew firing 9mm brownings in the hope of simulating an mg turret (estimate of efficacy 0.1% and slef inflicted wounds likely), or throwing tinned rations out of the beam windows hoping the bad guys would ingest compo and have to rtb.

Dave

[LookingNorth]

TimM- "Actually I was thinking more like maybe they're too good (having seen the book)?!"

Well, ex-phot hat on, apart from the shot of the fin with the strobe on, the shots you've posted are all a bit on the dark and dreary side to be honest, the only nicely lit one is the Nimrod one, and the background is pretty uninteresting on that one which kills the shot for me. Certainly the only one I'd have submitted to the boss would be the strobey fin.

[Tim McLelland]

Lookingnorth - actually, the comment about the photos being "too good" was a tongue-in-cheek reply to the post about the book which was what Upshutter was referring to. As he knows, the photos were originally destined for the RAF's anniversary book which turned-out to be a major disappointment - the RAF PR guru who was overseeing it threw a tantrum (nobody knows why - we weren't even given an explanation) and went-off to produce his own project using mostly stock images which turned-out to be something of a disappointment - if you've seen it, you'll know what I mean!

Anyway, sorry you don't like the photos - I thought they might amuse/interest some of the Ppruners. Guess you can't please all the people all the time!

[davejb]

and I think they're good shots, and I particularly liked the Vulcan - although probably one of the easier ones when you think how easy it must have been to hold the camera for that Arrows' photo.

I'd call them more 'dramatic' than 'dark' frankly.

Dave

[Max Shutterspeed]

Anyway, sorry you don't like the photos - I thought they might amuse/interest some of the Ppruners. Guess you can't please all the people all the time!

The problem is, all monitors are different and lots of people have laptops. Unless you're looking through a profiled screen, the colours etc will be different each time.

They look slightly dark on my screen, but nothing a quick tweak in repro wouldn't solve. If you want to be a PITA nit-picker, the upper wing is in shadow on the Tornado shot, but come on, I've got to say they look pretty good to me.

Bet the camera was pretty heavy at times....:)

Max

[Maple 01]

I dunno, some kind chap pitches up on PPRuNe and posts some great shots of some fast pointy jets (and Tornados) and misrable sods crawl out of the woodwork and complain abot artistic composition! Nice work Tim, do you have a dedicated website?

[Al R]

Great shots there.. like most, I have one or two faves.

I'm sure that Tim would be the first to debate robust, candid and constructive feedback/criticism. Someone with his talent has got the skills to debate his art with confidence I think. And as a consequence, its not unfair for board members to come to expect more of artists like him, to aspire to those standards (I certainly do) and apply it to their own work, to discuss it at an appripriate level and to be able to move the bar onwards and upwards.. because isn't that what its all about too?

Lets not shoot a messenger simply because he's not on message. There's a fine line between genuine appreciation and people falling overthemselves in an attempt to deliver a litany of superlatives (I wouldn't mind a few though).

I sometimes wish we had a sticky here, where new fots could be viewed and technical and artistic merits debated (properly?). Is there somewhere else in the pprune empire for this? If so, apologies - I have 2 pprune chapters saved onto 'faves', and thats it. I'm sure that you'd get more in-house cross pollination, the traffic would justify its presence, and adgoogle would love it too.

(with apologies to Seldom for being retired and getting one post nearer to 1000 posts in under 12 months)

[green granite]

One of the problems with photography is getting the "right" light for the intended shot. On the ground you can look at the shot you want and say "ok if I come back about 6am, when the sun is shining, it should be about right", it may take several days before the conditions are right. Air to air stuff is much more "well the light's not perfect but take the shot anyway cos it's the only chance I'm going to get" (Unless you can lay on the required sortie at a moments notice when the weather is perfect)

[Tim McLelland]

Actually, this is a subject which comes-up on enthusiast sites quite regularly. Lots of people (myself included) welcome critical comment, as it's always useful to know what other people think. Most of my work is ultimately used in books or magazines, so it's helpful to know what people (ie- the potential readers) like or don't like, and why. The problem is that some photographers (particularly guys who just take pictures for their own enjoyment) get a bit upset when people start making critical comments, and others then say (quite rightly) that being critical just discourages people from taking pictures, or at least from posting them up for others to see. Likewise, people also say that posting comments like "nice shots" is just pointless and makes wading-through threads very tedious. It's a no-win situation.

Personally, I'm thick-skinned enough to happily hear any criticism. I'm wise enough to know when someone is carping just for the sake of it (or to try and start an argument) but a valid comment is always worth hearing, even if it's just a subjective (non-technical) viewpoint. The problem is that some people aren't quite so open to criticism, and they can get a bit upset, so I can see both sides of this issue. Maybe posts should have warning triangles attached which tell readers whether the photographer is a delicate soul who only accepts praise, or whether he's willing to withstand all comments, good or bad?!

I agree entirely with the comments regarding screen quality. It's quite astonishing how different pictures can look, depending on the screen you're looking at. My main computer has a lousy screen and I rely on my laptop to give me a better idea of what an image actually looks like, but I'm quite willing to assume that my pictures will look completely different on somebody else's. To some extent I don't worry about it because if/when a picture needs to be reproduced in a publication, the layout and print people will adjust the image so that it's "correct" (at least for their purposes).

Maple, no I dn't have my own website. I've often thought about getting one (I might do some day) but I've never needed one. As a freelancer I generally approach publishers myself (or if I'm lucky they sometimes approach me), so I don't really have any need for a site as such, and I've never sold photos as stand-alone products - I inevitably use them as part of wider projects.

Max, you're right about that bit of shadow on the Tornado shot. Just one of those situations where you have to go with what you've got and hope for the best! Naturally, a break like that is over in a second, so there's no time to look for things like shadows. All you can do is get everyone in the right place, give the nod to go, and grab the shot at the instant where the image looks right (or just keep the shutter pressed and take loads of shots, but personally I've never been a big fan of that approach). It could have been better but I was trying to get a fairly dynamic shot with a bit of blue sky where text/titles could be included in the middle. If there had been enough time/fuel it would have been nice to have had a few more goes but that was a luxury we didn't have.

You're right about the camera being heavy sometimes. The low-level shot of the F3 is a good example. We were going round in a tight turn to try and get a bit of water vapour off the wings so we were generally somewhere around the 5-6g mark all the way round. You can imagine that it was a pretty sweaty saga punctuated by a whole lot of grunting and swearing! Again, that shot could have been better but it was the last image we tried to get and it was almost dark by then (we landed back at Leeming in darkness), particularly at low level. We spent hours waiting for the guys at Leuchars to set-off to meet us and by the time we were sat in a cockpit looking at the sun starting to set, still waiting for Leuchars, I was starting to think it would be dark before we even got airborne!

The Reds shot was another difficult shot to get. There was no opportunity to set-up a chase plane (both available aircraft were u/s) so the only opportunity was to simply grab a seat in the actual display routines. The problem with that is the proximity of the other aircraft (which makes a very wide angle lens necessary), and it means that there's no opportunity to get "pretty" shots of the whole formation. For most of the display, you've basically got another Hawk right next to you, filling your viewfinder. You have to try and follow the routine through the viewfinder as potential images come and go in milliseconds, but holding a camera to your eye is very tiring, especially if it's a flat display where there's an almost constant 5g or so, all the way through. Unfortunately, I visited during a period of foul weather and despite sitting-in on four displays, we only ever broke-out of the flat display very briefly on just one flight - in fact we nearly didn't get airborne at all because of the crosswind limits.

So, with an almost constant g load, holding up a camera gets very tiring very quickly. Insitinctively, you want to try and brace yourself against your knee or the canopy frame but of course you can't do that. The most important thing is to keep your limbs away from the control column and throttle otherwise there's going to be a major disaster. Likewise, you can't hold the camera against the canopy as the aircraft is banging and sloshing about too much. Then to add to your problems, the canopy isn't optically perfect and you have to hunt-around for places where the image is as clear as possible. It's very difficult and very tiring. Not making excuses, but it's probably worth pointing-out that even a fairly average picture can be a devil to take! Generally, the best Reds shots come from a properly set-up photo-chase in an accompanying aircraft, ideally out in the sunny skies over Akrotiri. Sitting-in on practice displays in stormy Lincolnshire isn't quite as ideal!

Okay, I've probably rambled-on way too much. Hope the comments are of interest though.:)

[PingDit]

Some excellent piccies there - many thanks. I think the best of the bunch has to be the one of the true all-rounder, worlds best multi-role Nimrod:E

[Warmtoast]

Tim
An excellent set of shots – I envy your expertise and access!

I do however; wish the moaners/critics would keep quiet if they think a shot is not of the quality that THEY expect. Depending what they intend to do with what they see, are they just looking, admiring, or criticising etc. If the latter there is an easy answer; download the picture in question and adjust to taste using a relatively simple photo editing program.

Witness Tim’s very good original

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r231/thawes/3three.jpg

And as adjusted by simply lightening the shadows as below

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r231/thawes/TornadoAdjusted.jpg

[LookingNorth]

I'm glad Tim is happy to receive some criticism; I'm not carping for the sake of it. 'Dark' and 'dramatic' are two different beasts. Black shadows hiding any detail are not really very interesting unless there are highlight areas to give contrast, so dark means just that. I'd go so far as to say many of the shots are noticeably underexposed (I'm guessing a new convert to digital? DSLR bodies have a tendency to deliberately underexpose to retain highlight information without blowing whites), and some simple levels work in Photoshop would save the day (as per above post, though the clouds have gone rather too blue).

The Nimrod shot - well, a second or two later and the background would have been much better. I know how tricky air to air is in a jet, I spent my first three such trips barfing and came away with about 3 useable shots each time from several rolls of film. But I'll never show anyone the gash ones!

Anyway, a quick Google found the book in question - Fighting Force - with photos from Jamie Hunter, and frankly Tim your comments about it being a disappointment don't really reflect the content, which is pretty damn good all-round.

Not carping, are you Tim?

Edit: I sometimes hate editing but we cannot allow one ad at the expense of others - sorry.

[Tim McLelland]

That's monitors for ya - the lightened shot looks really washed-out on my laptop. It's amazing that when so much money and technlogy goes into computer design these days, they don't seem able to produce a standard screen which gives the same reproduction as every other. But then I imagine the manufacturers of the various calibration kits wouldn't want their market ruining?!

On my laptop the red on the 56 Sqn F3's tail is so bright it looks almost like dayglow - not good - but I think if I adjusted the image to get a better red, the rest of the shot would be desaturated to the point of being almost black & white. Oh well, nothing's ever perfect I guess!

[green granite]

I suppose the best thing to do would be fore everyone to adjust the monitor's gamma to the same level using the Adobe gamma corrector. That way we would see almost the same thing. The lightened picture looks good on my monitor.

[Derek Booth]

Whilst Adobe Gamma gets you nearer the mark, any professional photographer worth their salt will have a profiled monitor.

This you can do yourself, though the hardware/software combination to do it is not inexpensive. Alternatively, there are people who will come out and do it for a fee. Monitors do 'drop off' with time so profiling is not a 'one-off' event.

The outcome of good profiling is the production of a monitor image to Industry standards. An image will appear on any profiled monitor looking the same as on any other profiled monitor.

[Max Shutterspeed]

I suppose the best thing to do would be fore everyone to adjust the monitor's gamma to the same level using the Adobe gamma corrector. That way we would see almost the same thing. The lightened picture looks good on my monitor.

Unfortunately, even individual web browsers can show colour differently. On my Mac, I like Opera best, then Firefox, when it's not falling over. But if I want to see an image accurately, I use Safari, as it uses colour profiles.

MS

[Derek Booth]

Following on from my earlier post; the next step would be to also calibrate your printer, in order to output, as near as possible, what is displayed on the monitor (though you will never obtain an exact replication, as the monitor image is displayed by transmitted light and a print by reflected light).

With printer calibration, it is necessary to create a profile for each type of paper (that includes different surface finishes albeit from the same manufacturer) to be used and also each inkset (manufacturer's or compatible independent etc.). This can result in a plethora of individual profiles from which to select the appropriate one, when printing.

[RRAAMJET]

MadMart: no, it was an F-5 (E model, I believe, single-seater w. leading edge slats, as per the old agressor sqdns. The T-38 Talon has a fixed leading edge and no variable intake ramps, always a 2-seater. Flies great though!)

Tim: pics are great, I thought...I'm forwarding them to a neighbour of mine here in US who flew F-3's. Should bring a tear...

[skydriller]

Havent T-38's just been grounded following several fatal crashes?

[Tim McLelland]

As Derek mentions, that's another headache - the way that printers have a nasty habit of producing a print which doesn't quite look like the image on your monitor. On balance, I think I'll cope with what I've got and leave the finer adjustments to the publishing people, but I agree it is a frustrating business. You'd think that in this day and age it wouldn't be much to ask to have all monitors (and printers) capable of producing similar results... and yet...:)