Concorde Photography Tour, August 7-10, 2003

Thr, Aug. 7, 2003

A Concorde (G-BOAD) being towed across the road near Hatton Cross station from the maintenance area to the terminal. This is such a beautiful airplane! Of the pictures taken in this tour, it's one of two pictures I liked the most.

This is my first time seeing Concorde landing so close! The picture is not too bad, but I cannot give an A grade to this one because I lost contour of the tail fin.... It happened before. Concorde is such a difficult airplane to photograph.... In addition, for some reason, this one came about an hour and thirty minutes late. It should have landed at 5:30pm, but actually it landed at 7:00pm. If it had come on time, I'm sure I would not have missed the outline of the fin.

I couldn't get the registration of this airplane. Could anyone tell me which Concorde it is?

Fri, Aug. 8, 2003

Day 2 of the tour. I had a really a rare opportunity to take two Concordes in one picture! Unfortunately, I had a 28-105mm lens on my SLR. So, they are small, but it's enough for my memorial shot!

This one is G-BOAC.

Look carefully! The nose of another Concorde is seen above the tow truck.

On this day, I made a terrible mistake. I was thinking I loaded a 36 exposure film in my camera, which turned out to be a 24. Another unlucky thing was, only 1 exposure was remaining when I had finished photographing the taking towing. Naturally, when I took a first shot of the landing, my camera started rewinding the film. I only could helplessly look at the beautiful airplane passing in front of me. Ah, let's think positivel. I had an oppotunity to look at the bird landing by my naked eyes, not through the lens. And, the arrival was late again (7:00pm).

G-BOAC taxing from terminal 4 to RW27R in late sun light. Beautiful airplane, isn't it?

This is another one of two pictures I like the best of all the pictures here. Nothing is blocking its beautiful airframe, although the bottom side of the airplane is dark, features of the fuselage are well captured, and the contour of the wing is clearly visible.

Profile look. Just before the departure, but the sun was the other side.

Sat, Aug. 9, 2003

OK, only my aim today was to shoot a departure to Barbados in the morning (BA273). The taxing didn't come out well. I didn't expect the fence wires so visible. I used my 170-500mm lens, which performs super-well in airshows when taking photos of airplanes flying 300ft above ground, but this time, the big diameter of the lens, which is nearly always an advantage, was a disadvantage.... But, I didn't miss this afterburner shot! Look at the power of four Olympus engines!

Sun, Aug. 10, 2003

OK, this picture is nearly full frame. I cannot print to a paper unless I find a good photo shop which can print manually, with a white border, without cropping the entire picture. But, for a scanner, it's not a problem. I think it's G-BOAE, but not 100% sure.

OK. It landed on time. But I had clouds behind. The contour of the vertical tail wing is unclear again....

This one did somehow capture the contour of the vertical tail wing, but not very clearly. And, the background is a cloud. Not blue sky....

And, now it is in front of the blue sky. How come it misses the back edge of the vertical tail wing! Oh no! It is a pretty picture. But, I cannot give A grade to this one again due to the contour of the vertical tail wing. I have no idea what else I could do though. Should I have increased the appature? Or reduce? Or else? I don't know. It's a difficult airplane to take a good picture.... Well, good enough for my memorial shot.

Close up look of the nose section, showing Concorde's famous variable geometry nose.

It took off after two hours delay. Good thing was it took off toward me. But, bad thing was the sky was already dark.... Anyways, it's my memorial shot. I took a picture of Concorde take-off, too!