...suppliers of superficially competent post processing since 1846.
It's Saturday. It's 7:40am. On your marks...
Get set ....
Get some water and sun screen...
Wait for it! Especially you down there on the left pulling faces!
Go!
Saturday the lighting was pretty good up to around midday. So there some some nice arrival opportunities, including...
...and then some decent light for Brendan O'Brien's stunt flying...
...but not quite enough to allow some of Brendan's harshest critics a decent aim when trying to shoot him out of the sky.
Later on life got more "entertaining" for anyone trying to wrestle some halfway decent pixels from a day's flying. But for anyone lucky enough to be going both days there were more than enough great opportunities to get at least 1 salvageable shot out of an 8Gb card. (Maybe even 2 if you apply enough post processing, and sacrifice an assortment of first-born, virgins, and Tesco value chickens to the Photographic Gods). So let's just get on with the show, eh?
Some of this stuff will be Saturday, some Sunday. Chances are if the lighting's shocking it was Saturday... or I just ran out of talent.
Despite the low ceiling and lack of smoke (temporarily withdrawn after several failures, apparently), the Falcons were up to their usual high and dramatic display standards. Well, except for this guy doing handstands...
And their Chinook was suitably wokky.
The later role demo with dangling jeeps and assorted manoeuvring was good entertainment, but I won't bore you with any photos of that. Neither will I confirm that most of mine are already in pixel landfill due to my annoying insistence on trying to take a sharp shot at 1/80th, down the little f28 hole where the dust and blur fairies live.
Sadly the consistently superb glider display was only able to fly on Saturday (another low ceiling issue perhaps?) but it's always a very welcome change of pace and a great sight in the air.
Heat haze (enhanced here by the second Tornado) was soon a real problem on both days...
But at least there was a little vapour action in evidence to cheer us up through the haze...
The role demo put on by the circling Tornados was suitably impressive. And there's no such thing as too much pyro, is there?
Ok, maybe sometimes there is, especially if you're the one who's got to sort out the damage. It took a loooong time to put the grass fires out on Saturday. But even the earlier flares from the Falcons' ground crew had set some grass on fire, so that was no surprise really. And it did at least provide an interesting backdrop on both days. There were some great opportunities for those who got lucky with aircraft flying in front of, or from behind clouds like this...
I seemed to miss them all though!
Let's have a chance of pace now. How about something big...
And while we're looking in that direction, my only halfway decent Lanc shot of the weekend. Shame about the static props...
Now a much smaller guest appearance from Saturday...
And something just a little larger from Sunday....
This, however, is how I prefer to see passenger jets on a show day...
And while we're contemplating the Lynx effect (which really does attract the girls now, right into the pilot's seat) a couple more...
That would've been a nice 'yes we're definitely at Biggin' shot if the Saturday light had been a bit more like this...
Time to step up the action I think. How about...
...complete with a guest appearance from the shadowy 5th reserve member of the Blades...
And now for my personal favourite from the weekend. A 'Stella' solo performance if ever there was one...
While in vapour mood I suppose we'd better get the obligatory Reds shots out of the way.
It was a great display, despite the limitations on both days. However if I'm honest I think the support team flies a tighter display down the runway.
Now for a quick run through of some aircraft I didn't get too many decent shots of. First the sporty little French Alpha...
The compulsory Miss D shot...
Team Viper, who I think got bumped from the end of Sunday to allow the show to finish on time (unlike Saturday where we got an extra hour's flying for free!)
And this might have been a Harrier shot if my camera hadn't been so easily distracted by lens porn.
Now for the big theme of the day, the 70th Anniversay of the Battle of Britain. It's a hard experience to capture properly, but the sight of so many WW2 aircraft taxiing or in the air at once was a very special experience. Probably one best experienced rather than shot. Still, a few pictures came out ok.
This was probably my best panning attempt, but there really should have been more given the amount of practice I had with so many aircraft movements...
No prop blur, but I am a sucker for a bit of glint...
And although I'm not a big fan of effects, this crop into the smoke was so grainy it was begging for a bit of gratuitous sentimentality...
Though I'd have been happier if it looked more like this...
The Biggin skylarks, however, would have been much happier with a bit less of this...
The finale of this sequence was a very tight display by the Typhoon and single Spitfire. They've clearly been working hard on this since last year, and it was a great sight even if the lighting didn't always live up to the spectacle.
Fortunately the lighting was a bit better for Sally B on Sunday, though the sharpening fairies needed reinforcements to bring this one back from the brink.
With the WW2 section over, and this post already longer than a daytrip to Bognor in January, or even a King Air display (sorry
), I really must shut up. However I can't go without paying tribute to the amazing flying from The Red Bull Matadors, to my sunglasses, and to the art of extreme squintography, without whom none of this would be possible.
And of course no Biggin, least of all the best Biggin for years, would be complete without a brief excursion into the valley...
And so, ladies and gentlemen, we come to end of another show. But before we go, there's just time for a few parish notices.
Sorry lads, but you won't be able to spot Wayne Rooney's missing talent even with binoculars...
Please note that the toilets are behind the crowd line, not in front...
And please do not panic next time some chav in the valley torches his ride...
Finally, would whoever left a corpse on the runway please collect it from the lost children's tent.
I don't know about anyone else, but after a long, blistering weekend in the heat that's how I felt too!
Anyway, if you got this far, thanks for looking. If you've still not had enough, the best way to view all this (and more) is at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/mcp.andrew/Biggin2010Just click on the slideshow button up at the top left.
Andrew McP... in front of the Merlin, just to the right of the headlamps.
Apologies if you were sat behind me and saw too much of the back of my head, or beside me and had to put up with my chatter. It was a great weekend though, and I met some really nice people.
