Phill Rawlins Online - Manchester aviation and transport photography

The Red Arrows at Southport

6 September 2003. A dull and overcast day, but the Reds still put on a show stopper.

Five frames from the display at Southport on 6 September 2003, a week before the team appeared at Morecambe. Click any photograph for a larger view.

The display

Red Arrows Hawks in formation over Southport, 6 September 2003
Formation pass. Southport’s seafront gives a clean horizon and nothing else in the frame.
Red Arrows crossing over Southport on an overcast day
Crossing. The Synchro Pair passing at low level.
Red Arrows Hawks banking over Southport
Banking away.
Red Arrows in a tight formation over Southport
Tight formation.
Red Arrows with smoke on over Southport
Smoke on.

Photographing a display in bad weather

The 6 September display was flown under low cloud with almost no blue sky at all. That is the worst possible condition for air display photography: the aircraft are lit from behind a diffuser, so there is no modelling on the airframe, and the smoke trails that make the Red Arrows’ shapes read on the ground become almost invisible against the cloud.

The way round it is to photograph the moments with the strongest contrast. Where the formation crosses itself, or a solo aircraft passes close and low, there is still a silhouette worth having. Where the team spreads out into a wide shape against flat white sky, there generally is not — so those frames were not taken.

Why it is still worth going

Because the display is not really about the photographs. An air display on the coast is one of the few free, public spectacles left, and the crowd on the seafront is as much a part of it as the aircraft. The Morecambe page, taken eight days later in better light, has a photograph of the spectators that says more about the afternoon than any of the aircraft frames.