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I spent the day at the Royal International Air Tattoo yesterday and was there from 6:30am to 7pm so covered a lot of ground. It was probably the best air display I've seen since the 90s, pretty incredible.
The day was completely faultless in terms of the organisation, but one particular aspect left a bad taste...photographers.
1) Walking past the B-1 Bomber on static, it was early so pretty quiet, me and Dad were heading over to read the tech sheet thing in front of it and look at it close up (it was well roped off). "GET OUT OF THE WAY" came hollering from the distance, and again, and again. We turned around and a good 30 yards back were 10-15 photographers stood on stools pointing their cameras at the B-1. They were remarkably aggressive and wouldn't let up until we had vacated the vast empty space in front of them. I'm always more than happy to detour around people taking photos etc and not intentionally jump in when somebody is clearly trying to shoot something, but for a whole bunch of guys to demand a massive area of tarmac and shoot from a distance, AND be aggressive about it, not on.
2) We were sat at the front of the crowd line for the display, when the Red Arrows were taking off two young lads came up to the front and we made room to let them get at the front to see the take-off. Guy with a huge set up uses that as his opportunity to pretty much elbow past them and take up the space we had quite clearly made for them.
Looking along the crowdline near us there were numerous occasions when photographers at the front would stand up (completely unnecessarily), causing a wave of others to need to stand or move to see things happening lower down (such as the Sea King display). A couple with their two boys a bit further down from us looked pretty fed up with the selfishness of it all.
I won't tar all aviation photographers with the same brush as I'm sure many are perfectly nice, but there were just so many little things throughout the day where I felt ashamed to be photographer. It was a huge contrast to Goodwood FoS two weeks before, which despite being much, much busier in terms of available photo spots was surprisingly civilized.
The day was completely faultless in terms of the organisation, but one particular aspect left a bad taste...photographers.
1) Walking past the B-1 Bomber on static, it was early so pretty quiet, me and Dad were heading over to read the tech sheet thing in front of it and look at it close up (it was well roped off). "GET OUT OF THE WAY" came hollering from the distance, and again, and again. We turned around and a good 30 yards back were 10-15 photographers stood on stools pointing their cameras at the B-1. They were remarkably aggressive and wouldn't let up until we had vacated the vast empty space in front of them. I'm always more than happy to detour around people taking photos etc and not intentionally jump in when somebody is clearly trying to shoot something, but for a whole bunch of guys to demand a massive area of tarmac and shoot from a distance, AND be aggressive about it, not on.
2) We were sat at the front of the crowd line for the display, when the Red Arrows were taking off two young lads came up to the front and we made room to let them get at the front to see the take-off. Guy with a huge set up uses that as his opportunity to pretty much elbow past them and take up the space we had quite clearly made for them.
Looking along the crowdline near us there were numerous occasions when photographers at the front would stand up (completely unnecessarily), causing a wave of others to need to stand or move to see things happening lower down (such as the Sea King display). A couple with their two boys a bit further down from us looked pretty fed up with the selfishness of it all.
I won't tar all aviation photographers with the same brush as I'm sure many are perfectly nice, but there were just so many little things throughout the day where I felt ashamed to be photographer. It was a huge contrast to Goodwood FoS two weeks before, which despite being much, much busier in terms of available photo spots was surprisingly civilized.