Dan O'Hagan wrote:Little Gransden is easily the worst offender of all the venues on the calendar for liveside interlopers. As Dan says, how many "official photographers" does such a small event need? Where are these "official" photographs used?
As I run airside photography at Gransden perhaps you'll permit me to respond.
Three of us were shooting for the show's own archive - used on the programme, calendar, website and press releases. Of those three, Adam was crowdside pretty much all day, Darren was mostly out of sight by the fire crew and I was roving around the site and so far nobody's posted a pic of me getting in the way! Also wearing photographer vests were one visiting member of the aviation press, who also stayed out of sight most of the day, and a guest photographer known to and invited on by the show's organiser. I briefed them all about not getting in the way of the paying punters and moved one on myself when it was obvious he could be blocking a view of the limbo act for a portion of the crowd. We also had a guy shooting video who was mobile throughout the day so may have briefly blocked views of something on the ground but hopefully not for long, and another video shooter who was airside briefly - I think local press, for just one act.
The marshals have a job to do, and as per Andy's post above, it isn't just arm waving at taxiing aircraft. I have no problem whatsoever with them carrying cameras as well if they have spare moments to use them. Some of the high vis crew you see are actually crew for the various display acts, and also have jobs to do, without which you won't have a show. We do have challenges with layout at LG, and the congregation of staff around the control van/fire crew area and nearby pinch point is a little inevitable but I will have words to see if we can get people to think a little more about where they are standing from moment to moment.
Incidentally criticism of the show's content from somebody who didn't actually go to it is going to be given exactly the amount of weight you would imagine.