Event - Belgian Airforce Days
As you might know: Sanicole 2022 was the first event I shot some airshow stills and it was while working at the Sony booth. Actually it was good fun, not só very different from the fast cars I shot over 15 years ago.. and the cameras have advanced quite a bit since then.
Since the airshows in Limburg (BE) alternate between the airbases of Sanicole & Kleine-Brogel, this year we were invited to the military airbase of Kleine-Brogel with a booth during the Belgian Airforce Days.
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Yes, those BAF-Days were during the heatwave of early September and now it's the last week of November.. and I still have almost 200 selected stills to process. Maybe that tells you something about the workload of these last months and of the prioritization.
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And that's too bad because it was a great event to work
(Eventhough I could hardly stand on my foot due to a tear in the ankle ligament which hurt as much as this spit that's haunting me at the moment.. Decades of pushing your own body to its limits and exhausting yourself without recuperation apparently have consequences at a certain point in life. And that point was reached in 2022.)
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Was there much negative to say about the event?
▷ The extreme heat wasn't their fault. Things will get worse in the years to come.
▷ Due to the heat & draught no flares were allowed and limited smoke was used. And I really super-liked those shots last year.
▷ The air was superdry which avoided the forming of clouds around the wings.. and those add an extra dimension to airplane shots.
▷ There was no "after dark" show, however: this allowed us to get home a bit earlier than last year and catch a few hours of sleep.. because you might not realise it but we had to get to our booth next to the tarmac before 8AM otherwise the car with all the heavy flight cases of camera gear wasn't allowed on base.. I'm not a morning person but driving your car through a high security airforce base is worth getting up before dawn.
▷ So many people came to say hi and I might not always have had enough time for them, but that negative point is on me, not on the event.
▷ The admission price is so high that if I hadn't been working there, I would not have attended. Then again: it isn't cheap to keep those planes safely in the air & those giant masses of spectators safe on the ground.
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Positives?
Loads of 'em. From the insane skills of those pilots to the nice people we've met/saw again. From a fresh beer with a great view on airborne action, via the moon that appreared behind the planes in some shots, to the great reception by all airbase personel. We had a great time eventhough we were working.
▷ A tiny selection of stills will go to Instagram.
▷ No video was shot, so nothing to share on Clapper.
▷ NEW: Buy Red Cathedral a whisky on Ko-Fi
▷ All 200 (soon 400) photos can be found on/downloaded from my Flickr once processed & uploaded
▷ Updates on the post-processing progress will go to THE Facebook.
A link to this article: https://tinyurl.com/BAF2023
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There is much more backlog still waiting to be processed, so more blasts from the past might show up..
Namaste
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