East Midlands Airport Night Shoot

Thursday 18 August 2016 Ray Ball and I ventured up to East Midlands Airport for some night photography at the airport from the site of the Aeropark aviation museum, where two mounds give unhindered views over the western end of the runway. It was a fine evening and predominantly easterly breeze providing a great view of incoming aircraft and there were plenty of them too.

Apart from an late afternoon photo session with the Lightnings at Bruntingthorpe I had never done any night shooting and some of the result clearly showed that.  I have made a selection of the picture I rook during the evening roughly from full daylight to dark.  I used two cameras and my phone to capture some of the views.

With Ray's help I managed to get some decent pictures, but when I started to experiment things went slightly off course. Having said that the results are still reasonable, considering it was my first attempt. Some of the picture are a bit grainy because I used to high an ISO setting, but practice make perfect (or better in my case).

So here is a kaleidoscope of aircraft movements and views across the airport and the museum.

The first three picture were taken with my phone of the setting sun.

Boeing 767-200ER of DHL arriving from Cincinnati, USA

Agusta Westland AW-109 G-YRTE

Flybe flight from Edinburgh over the threshold

Edinburgh flight touches down

Cessna 310s G/BODY & G/SOUL flew in about 20 minutes apart

BMI flight arriving from London

Ryanair Boeing 737 departing for Krakow, Poland

West Atlantic B737 freighter departing with same airline's ATP in the background

Cessna Citation 680 arriving on a potential collision course with an 
unidentified low flying carrier pidgeon

.....and touching down

The sun is getting ever lower on the horizon....

...casting its red glow on approaching aircraft like this Ryanair Boeing 737

Boeing 7670200ER arriving from Philadelphia, USA

UPS Boeing 767-200ER arriving from New York tail glowing in the setting sun

UPS Boeing 767-200ER about to touch down

One of two Jet2 Boeing 737s arriving in the fading light

Not the sharpest of picture, but is shows panning  effect in low light conditions 
on this Embraer 120 Brasilia.

This was the last handheld shot of the evening, the light being very low. 
Boeing 777 freighter sneaks in...

...and finds its slot at the DHL freight terminal. Shot from Ray's tripod....

....and zoomed in to the max

Reasonably happy with the results and very happy with a great evening  out. More of these outings 
will help to improve  photography skills, especially camera setting under the ever changing lighting 
conditions.

Theo Claassen

26 August 2016