Welcome to aviationphoto.co.uk!! - the home of airshow photography by Andrew Critchell

I have been passionate about aviation and airshow photography for as long as I can remember, and have been an avid airshow attendee since 1983 and my first outing to a Great Warbirds Air Display at West Malling in the UK. It was another year before I was let loose with a camera, a Hanimex 110 slide action job, with which I plied my trade, always dreaming of taking pictures like the ones I saw in the annual Airshow magazine (sadly now no longer published) filled with images by master lensmen Duncan Cubitt and the late Steve Fletcher.

Finally for Christmas 1988 I had my first SLR, hurray!!, a vivitar v335 with a 35-70mm zoom lens but of course I longed for a more powerful lens so I could take those all important images of aircraft doing their thing in the sky and after much longing was the proud owner of a 70-200mm which of course I found not powerful enough.. (the unwinnable equipment ‘arms race’ began early!!)

So now here I am, twenty seven years later, and I still want a bigger lens and a better camera body so what has changed?!

Well, I made some dreams come true!! – I got published and spent several years covering airshows for Flypast magazine and other publications which was a great privilege. Additionally, through the openness and vision of Eric Coeckelberghs and the Belgian photocrew I took my first air to air pictures in May 2010 at the Air to Air Academy and was lucky enough to have 22 aircraft in 7 different sequences come in front of my lens on my first sortie – WOW!!

Now I take airshow photographs purely for pleasure and am constantly inspired to do better by the great images posted to forums such as UK Airshow Review - airshows.co.uk

I hope you enjoy some of the airshow photographs I have posted here – thanks for looking!

What's in the bag -

Prior to going digital in 2004 with a Nikon D70 all airshow images were taken on either a Minolta Dynax 7 or 505Si Super 35mm SLR camera body with a 400mm f5.6 lens or a 70-300mm f4.5/5.6 telephoto zoom lens.  Film stock used was generally Fuji Sensia 100 ASA colour transparency.   

Nikon D200 + Grip
Sigma 300mm f2.8 + 1.4x teleconverter
Sigma 135-400mm f3.5/5.6
Nikon 18-200mm f3.5/6.3 VRII
Nikon 17-55mm f2.8

Andrew's photography – I sometimes takes pictures of things that are not flying – to see some this other work please visit www.i-scapephoto.com

Terms and conditions of entry to www.aviationphoto.co.uk

1) The website and the photographs contained within are copyright of the photographer Andrew Critchell.  Use of any image or part of the website in any form, including electronic storage, is a breach of copyright and is strictly prohibited.

2) Magazine extracts are reproduced with the kind permission of the publishers, Key Publishing Ltd and IPC Media Ltd.  Copyright remains with the publishers and all normal terms and conditions apply.  Any copying, use or storage of these extracts is strictly prohibited.

This site was last updated: 30/12/2011