These notes were written up from the years the photographs in this archive were taken. The equipment has moved on, but the problems have not: light is still awkward, subjects still move, and the interesting part of the frame is still usually further away than you would like.
Airside photography
Choose your position before the light
The single biggest improvement to any set of aircraft photographs is standing in the right place. Around Manchester that means the Aviation Viewing Park for arrivals on the 05 runway, and the lanes around the perimeter for departures. What matters is the sun: a fully backlit aircraft is unrecoverable, and no amount of sharpening brings detail back into a silhouette. Work out where the sun will be at the time you plan to be there, not where it is when you arrive.
Shutter speed, and knowing when to give up on it
A fast jet needs something in the region of 1/1000th of a second to freeze without panning. A propeller aircraft is the opposite problem: use a fast shutter speed and you get a perfectly sharp aeroplane with a propeller that looks switched off. For anything with a propeller, drop to 1/250th or 1/125th and pan with the aircraft. You will lose more frames to blur, and the ones that work look far better.
The watch is part of the kit
A camera’s internal clock drifts, and an approach is measured in seconds, so I keep a watch on the wrist as well as in the bag — it times the pass and the long exposures alike. The pieces I keep at home are reference replicas, and the search term I actually use is a pp replica; the one site I keep coming back to for the classic case shapes is the one it lands you on. There is a longer version of this on the watch notes page.
Panning is a physical skill
Stand with your feet apart, turn from the waist rather than the arms, and keep turning after the shutter releases. The most common mistake is stopping the pan the moment the shutter fires. Follow the aircraft all the way through and past it.
Concentrate on the unusual
It is tempting to photograph every movement. The frames that last, though, are the ones nobody else has: a Merlin calling in at a small grass airfield during a recruitment exercise, or the last arrival of a type that will never come back. The military aircraft page exists because of exactly that kind of afternoon.
Air displays
- Do not chase the whole formation. Nine aircraft in one frame at distance is a record shot, not a photograph. Wait until they fill the frame, even if that means missing the wider view.
- Watch for the smoke and the crossings. The Red Arrows display is designed around moments of maximum contrast — the Heart, the Swan, the Diamond Nine. Knowing the sequence means you can be pointed in the right direction before it happens.
- Protect the sky. A dull, overcast day produces a flat white background that washes out everything. Meter for the aircraft and accept that the sky will go grey; the alternative is losing the aircraft altogether.
- Include the crowd occasionally. One frame of onlookers watching a display says more about what it was like to be there than another tight shot of an aircraft. The best-liked photograph on the whole Morecambe page is of a spectator.
Ships and waterways
Working ships move slowly and are forgiving of shutter speed, but the Ship Canal presents its own problem: you are usually looking down at the water from a bridge, so the horizon sits high in the frame and the foreground is a bridge parapet. Get the foreground out of the way first, then compose. A lock is best photographed while the gates are moving, because that is when the scale of the structure becomes obvious against the hull.
Skylines and the city
Night photography without a fast lens
Everything on the Manchester at night page was taken from a stable surface with the camera held steady, long exposures and a low ISO. The trick is not a fast lens, it is the absence of movement: a wall, a railing, a tripod, and a shutter delay so pressing the button does not shake the camera. For bright street lighting, stop down to f/8 or beyond so the lights render as points rather than blobs.
Aerials
Shooting from a light aircraft means shooting through a window, and window glass at altitude is both dirty and cold. It also vibrates. The best results come from a high shutter speed, the camera not touching the airframe, and accepting whatever the pilot gives you in the way of a vantage point. The images on the aerial page were taken on two flights a year apart, which is why the pair of city centre views is worth looking at side by side: the change is visible.
Change is the subject
Anyone photographing a city should photograph the same view repeatedly. Two frames of the same street taken eight months apart document more history than a hundred frames taken on one afternoon. The Manchester Developments and Changing Manchester pages are the two that have aged best, purely because they were shot as a sequence.
Looking after the archive
The files here are the originals, and where a full-size version survives it is linked from the thumbnail. Nothing has been retouched, colour graded or cropped for display. An archive that has been quietly improved is much less useful than one that shows what the camera actually recorded. A handful of images show dust, softness or colour casts from the film and scanners of the time; they have been left alone.