Hi Guys,
While most of you chose to go to either the KLu Open Dagen or the Tiget Meet I made the trip to Hatzerim AFB in Israel to attend a pair of graduation ceremonies at the flying school, one ceremony was hels on Tuesday 24th June and the other held on Thursday 26th June.
Conditions were tricky as most of the flying took place between 6.45pm and 7.30pm, sunset in that part of the world being 7.45pm so lighting was very low. Some of the pictures have a slight grainyness to them due to the fact that I was trying to get a good balance between shutter speed and aperture, this resulted in iso settinge of between 320 and 500.
One of the unique aspects of the Israeli Air Force graduation ceremonies is the live fire demos, AH-64's firing their chain gun, Cobra's firing TOW missiles and F-16's dropping dummy bombs, pictures of all 3 types of demo are below.
Personally I'm happy with the pictures, lighting conditions conditions made things hard, some of the fast jet shots were taken at 1/400th sec and 400ISO, but overall I'm pleased. I had considered hanging up my camera as over the last few months I (in my own personal opinion) couldn't take a decent flying shot, Israel was make or break for me and I'm glad to say I've decided to stick with the photography for a while longer.
All comments, good or bad, are appreciated.
Enjoy,
Frank.
Although this picture is blurry and heavily cropped and won't win any awards I included it just so you can see the bombs leaving the F-16
