In A Spin

 This was a spectacular manoeuvre by the Red Arrows as the approached at speed with two jets flying a corkscrew around the five leading aircraft.

I am amazed by the precision and control at such high speeds that are required for this type of display, but of course this is also the culmination of hours upon hours of training and practice.

Flying High

 

Over the August Bank Holiday Weekend I was able to enjoy the Air Show at Rhyl and one of the attractions was the ever popular RAF Display Team the Red Arrows. I was lucky because the weather was perfect and the sky almost totally cloudless. The flying display was superb and luckily for me the team got to complete the full display, the following day it was cut short due to a bird strike smashing the cockpit of one of the jets although fortunately no one was hurt and the pilot was able to get back to base with one of his colleagues providing an escort.

I have lots of images of the Red Arrows on the day so narrowing it down to just a few is incredibly difficult. I will share some over the next few days showing different manoeuvres, and while the still image doesn't really do justice to the skill, the drama and the overall spectacle they are still pretty cool.

Given that these are famed as the Red Arrows and the planes are bright red you might wonder why the first image I have included in todays post is black and white. Well the answer is simple I was experimenting, and to me at least the image works really well. By increasing the contrast slightly I have been able to emphasise the speed of the turn and I think it highlights the swirls in the smoke trails to great effect.

The next two images are more traditional colour shots which look great but of the three I think my favourite is the first image. Let me know your thoughts.

Craftsmen At Work

It is always fascinating to see real craftsmen at work and so when we visited Murano on one of our days in Venice we made a point of visiting one of the many glass workshops where we watched one of the artisans at work.

In the first image you can see the molten glass glowing orange, it was around 1200 degrees celcius and it was almost magical as we saw it transformed from a glowing lump into a delicate bowl and in the next image as a long necked vase was created.

The sand had been extracted from a quarry in Fontainbleu (France) and had been heated overnight to become a pliable liquid and then in the hands of a skilled artist it was blown and twisted into so many different objects. We watched as in less than a minute he crafted a prancing horse. His colleague explained that it may only have taken 30 seconds to make, but it had taken 30 years to master the skill.

Walking back to get the vaporetto back to the main island we passed another workshop where we spotted the guy in the final image. There was a large crowd of people gathered around the entrance all watching intently but even with such a large audience he was totally absorbed in the task at hand.