Fleet Air Museum

Fleet Air Arm Museum

After taking enough photographs of trains, cars and ships I wanted to increase my options of aircraft and speaking with a friend they mentioned the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton would be worth a visit. 

Run by the Royal Navy, the museum has the world’s largest naval aviation collection situated across four large halls with two floors explaining the whole history of the collection and the Navy Air Arm. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect but this place was fantastic with a collection that spans all eras of aviation including WW1 bi-planes, WW2 carrier borne aircraft and modern Sea Harriers and helicopters. 

The place is huge which allows them to spread the collection out and although some aircraft have barriers around them, others you can walk freely around and beneath the wings. If you thought you were getting bored with the brilliant exhibits, the third hangar is interactive and you ‘fly’ onto an Aircraft carrier by helicopter and can see the planes taking off and landing whilst walking around more modern planes.  

The fourth hall is dedicated to leading edge technology including my favour plane, Concorde which is the first British built version used for testing supersonic speed, plus you can also sit in a fighter jets cockpit.

This was a brilliant day out and as you can see from my photographs below I took a huge number of shots which now makes it an extremely difficult decision what to include in the book. The only guaranteed place belongs to Concorde. 

If you are looking for a great day and are slightly interested in Aircraft, I could not recommend this place more. I have since learned that the Royal Air Force have their own museum so this will have to be a trip for another time after the book is completed. I hope the photographs below inspire you to visit.

Naval Fighter Plane photo joining

Naval Fighter Plane

During my visit to the Fleet Air Museum for photographs to include into my book project I noticed that the Grumman Martlet was situated within the hangar on its own with no obstructions from other Aircraft. As the background was vibrant with colours and textures I realised this would make a good subject for another photo joining experiment.

Once all the photos were stitched together I tried to crop the image into an oval shape, but unfortunately I did not take enough photographs of the background. With hindsight I could have used the same photographs of the floor overlapping each other multiple times to complete it, but it would have left gaps at the top.

When you are looking through the camera lens panning around the room it is difficult to know whether you have captured enough images. You only realise when joining the photographs that you have gaps together within the image.

Next time I perform this type of experiment I will try photographing the scene two or three times to ensure I cover all parts of the image or I will draw a grid of the image either mentally or on paper and tick off the areas that I have photographed.

Photos not used in book

Photos not used in book

As we travelled to numerous great places and saw a great variety of trains, cars, planes and ships it was extremely easy to take thousands of photographs to be used in my book. Although I would have liked to have added more to my book I felt that over 150 pages was more than enough especially considering I had a deadline to ensure it was printed in time to be handed in.

Some of the photographs which are shown below were easy to discard as they did not turn out as well as I hoped. But with the advantage of a digital EOS 60D SLA camera and multiple Sandisk 32Gb Extreme Pro SD cards I was able to take a huge number of photographs to ensure I had sufficient images for my book without having to return to take more shots. I would hate to image the cost of developing rolls of film to ensure I had good photographs.

The images below did not turn out well for a number of reasons but these are some of my thoughts. Image 2334 was too dark and I should probably have used the large flash especially considering the dismal day with bad light. Luckily this was located in Gloucester and we managed to return to the ship another day when in the vicinity. 

Image 2888 was not crisp and I could not photograph the rear of the car. Image 3025 was a car cut in half at Heritage Motor Centre but each half was too far apart to allow people to walk through. With a car in the background that drew your eye it was rejected. Image 3568 was a train at the National Railway Museum cut into sections to show how the train was built which I initially thought about adding but I decided I wanted whole working trains.

Image 3970 I rejected as I did not want to create an additional section on helicopters. Image 4249 showed a biplane with the one wing stripped back to the frame which would have been included if I could have taken one shot showing the whole aircraft. Image 4370 was the carcass of the aeroplane but I rejected once I realised I wanted to show all parts of each aircraft. Image 5414 showed a replica of the first plane to enter the Royal Naval service but I decided I should use original aircraft.

Image 6480 I did not realise that I was unfortunately too close and cut off part of the cabin and wheels. Image 6828 I rejected due to the proximity of the diesel locomotive parked next to it. Image 7825 was taken at the Blaenafon railway after the book was completed and did not want to add additional pages or remove an existing section I spent time researching. If only the trains started running earlier but at least I have some great photographs for volume 2.

Planes, Trains, Automobiles (& Ships) update

Planes, Trains, Automobiles (& Ships) update

Hopefully you have read my previous blog ‘book project’ which gives some insight into my thought process for the concept of this book and the later blogs about the various great places we have visited.

With approximately 1600 miles travelled to many locations around the country including York, London, Southampton and Portsmouth to take photographs of the various exhibits of Planes, Trains, Cars and Ships for my book I am finally coming to the end of the epic journey. Although hopefully weather permitting we will visit Blue Anchor, Minehead to see their working steam train so I can try and photograph one more moving train.

Generally we encountered few problems during our travels except for a couple of traffic jams returning home but we did encounter inclement weather on a number of occasions. The worst issue was caused by rain resulting in having to ensure the camera was kept as dry as possible and having to constantly wipe the lens to ensure no photographs had water spots.

Although I tried to meticulously plan all the visits and group them together there were a few mishaps along the way. Unfortunately we visited Blaenafon Steam railway, Butterly Midland Railway and Didcot Railway centre when the steam trains were not running which could have saved a journey if I had read the timetable. But sometimes luck is on your side because we would not have found Chinnor & Princess Risborough Railway had the steam train at Didcot been running. I also did not realise that other attractions were also nearby some places we visited, for example the Matthew which is a replica of the English ship that discovered North America in 1497 is located near SS Great Britain.

I was also pleasantly surprised how helpful and interested the volunteers were in my college book project at the various locations and the support and time they gave me regarding some of the exhibits. Being fortunately allowed to have unrestricted access to Concorde’s cockpit at Brooklands was unbelievable along with invaluable history and information whilst photographing inside the Vulcan bomber at the Jet Age Museum made the visits even more memorable. I must also remember to provide a copy of my photographs to the Jet Age Museum for use in their promotional literature.

The venues we visited during our travels ranged in size and cost with some allowing free entry and others charging a fee. All asked for a gift aid donation which I was happy to provide and some venues provided a year’s free admission with the gift aid receipt which would allow me to revisit them again once the weather improves assuming we have a summer this year.

The next challenge was to collate all the photographs and start to create the book in Blurb, the colleges recommended site. Although this was something new to me I was looking forward to starting the process. I downloaded and installed the software and started to create the book in a very easy to use and understand program. As I wanted to present my pages across two pages I used the standard template but this did not allow me to add any text which created a problem. Thinking outside the box I created my own customised pages and joined two images together to form one by carefully ensuring they lined up. 

With all the photographs taken I started to add as much as possible to the book to be able to show the readers all the details of the great steam trains, plane, cars and ships we visited. Once the photographs were added I started to research the different exhibits in books and the internet as I want to make it feel like a book you would want to purchase in a store and not have one or two line saying what it was and where photograph was taken. I wanted to ensure the reader enjoyed seeing the various modes of transport and would want to visit them to learn more. Although I must admit it is far bigger that I originally intended but I believe it was worth the time and effort involved creating it and would not change anything.