On the Ground
There were various things set aside for the ground activities in the event of rain (as it turned out, in the event of some rain, not all of it). On top of support from the various armed forces various other institutions set up stalls, including charities such as Cats Protection.
One other charity that had set up was a bird sanctuary, who had various amazing birds of prey on display – including this amazing bald eagle, which Holly had the privilege of holding:
There was also a vulture who was quite keen on catching some rays.
A ‘standard’ eagle was also in attendance.
Elsewhere, some marine commandos were giving a demonstration of unarmed combat.
Now I assumed such a demonstration would basically amount to this:
However, it turns out to be a lot more like good, old fashioned wrasslin’.
The demonstration was taking place at dusk – hence the orange tint to the images. I chose to shoot at f/1.8 to allow a fast shutter speed to catch the action frozen in time.
The display included disarming foes armed with, say, a knife…
… or a gun.
They also did some things that would’ve made a lot more sense if the pictures were moving.
And something which amounted to a battle royal.
Following this demonstration, we had a performance from the Band of HM Royal Marines Collingwood. I kept with the f/1.8 lens not just because of the fading light (which was a brilliant orange) but also to attempt to get narrow depth-of-field shots along the lines of the band.
Officiating it all was an admiral who was… interesting, to say the least. He was basically like Rik Mayall playing Lord Flashheart in Blackadder – constantly cheering ‘hooray!’ (with the crowd joining in, I might add), and when he was pointing out fellow officers he would ask each one “Still loyal?”. I loved it.
By far the biggest event going on on the ground, however, was a full assault on Bournemouth beach, in order to rescue a man in a bowler hat from a group of people dressed as terrorists. This involved boats, including the HMS Tyne, a Sea King helicopter and soldiers in a full-on display. This is the first of the events I photographed at the festival that I got to shoot on two occasions, on two different days, from two different angles. I think technically the first day was a practise, which is why when we first walked by some of the participants were just standing around.
It wasn’t long before the action started. Actually that’s a lie, it was about an hour and a half. Not strictly relevant, however.
First the dinghies, then the landing craft, and before you knew it the beach was full of people.
I like that last one – how the subject has some out-of-focus action going on in the foreground. It is, however, quite a busy shot.
Then the helicopter arrived, performing some stunts which seemed largely unnecessary, but they looked cool so I’m not going to argue.
Having taken these images of the first display, the second time we saw it I started shooting with shutter priority mode in order to use a slightly slower shutter speed to blur the rotor blades.
I think it greatly improved the helicopter shots (and all of the propeller plane shots that would follow, although at the expense of a slight loss of sharpness in some images).
The other added bonus is the ability to get some of those ‘blurred background’ shots that proved popular on my cycle race post.
Well, not that blurry – but then the shutter was at a relatively high 1/125. After the display, the Sea King took a bow.
I really like seeing the heat shimmer coming from the helicopter’s exhausts.
On both days the beach assault served as a warmup for the rest of the days’ events. However in order to keep you on your toes, I’m now going to jump the the end of the day events.
Creative Splurges 
The Breitling Wingwalkers flew over Knaphill today (29th August) around 3.15, probably on the way from Dunsfold to Cardiff, but I didn’t have my camera at the ready 😦
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I now have this image of the planes flying over with the girls still on top, reading newspapers…
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Nice photos, thanks for sharing!
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