Roaring Thunder On The Runway

[ Editor's Note: Yet another great addition to the FYP team, Benedict Chui hails from Hong Kong and has a very unique perspective, especially with shooting planes on the tarmac. I hope you find his articles to be extremely informative and his images to be truly inspiring as much as I have! Enjoy! ]

It was a dark afternoon and the sky seemed as though it would collapse on us at any instant, but we didn’t care. We were on the tarmac at the Hong Kong International Airport, standing beside a jet blast deflector at the end of an active taxiway. We were busy triggering our shutters like madmen capturing every airplane in sight. We could feel the silly grins on our faces. Even if the rain would have poured down, we would not have step back a bit! We were too way to excited; we were enjoying the jet engines roaring all over the place and savoring the smell of the jet fuel fumes that wafted across the tarmac. Suddenly, we heard a blast, and we were almost blown off our feet by a strong jet blast. We felt the heat, the pressure and we were scared to death. We ran like chickens! “Hey!” my partner said, “Where is the deflector?” It’s gone! Weren’t we standing right next to it? Why the hell is it now some ten meters behind us?

That was the very first time I shot photos on the tarmac a few years ago. I was accompanied by a very “experienced” aviation photographer Yet, still, we were stupid! Very, very stupid! Shooting on the airfield required 2 staff members escorting us at all times, an officer from the airport authority and a driver. One of the officer’s responsibilities was to keep an eye on us for safety reasons. That time, we moved in front of the deflector and inched forward bit by bit towards the corner of a cross way to get a better angle. You know photographers! She didn’t seem bothered, but while we were shooting there, we totally ignored the fact that a plane was approaching behind us. It made a swift 90 degree turn at the cross way and the turbulence swept over us, we were too close, though not in mortal danger. The control immediately called to move us back into a safe area. The officer in charge of our security was blamed and an official warning letter was issued to us afterwards.

The Hong Kong International Airport is always busy.

The Hong Kong International Airport is one of the busiest airports in the World. In 2011, it ranked 13th in passengers flow and 1st in cargo, yet it only has 2 runways. You can imagine how hectic it is on the airfield. Everything moves precisely and at a fast pace. During peak hours, once an aircraft leaves the jet bridge, another will replace it within minutes and planes depart the airfield in less than 60 second intervals between them. You’d think that shooting a busy scene like this would be easy, right? Wrong, actually it’s proved to be quite difficult sometimes. Yes, it’s easy to spot airplanes taxiing to the end of the runway and waiting to takeoff. However, you need to consider the weather, the sunlight, the angles, the locations you are shooting from and your composition. Don’t forget pollution problems, occasionally we cannot even see the end of the runway. Sometimes we need to revisit and shoot the same thing several times to get the right shot.

Since everything changes so quickly, and you only have limited time, you wish you could have one more pair of eyes to assist in capturing images. That’s what I did. I usually hire one more photographer to shoot in the airport if the budget allows. I want to ensure that we capture the desired shots. The downside was, we got quite a lot of duplicated shots. Never mind, two shots are always better than none! Besides, he is a more experienced aviation photographer than I am. Yes, the same guy I mentioned before! With a fellow photographer, we could split up to get different angles of the same scene. We alerted each other when we spotted something happening, then rushed to the spot where we would capture our images. After a while it became easy to identify the perfect landing and those that were not. I have been lucky enough to shoot from the tarmac many times and the excitement never fades.

A perfect touch down!

One down, one to go.

So, what does the client want us to shoot on the runways? Landings and takeoffs are the basics, but the most important thing is to show how busy the Hong Kong airport is and that it is close to full capacity. This required that we went to the side of the runway to capture that. While shooting from the side, we were allowed to get no closer than 200 meters to the runway (well, sometimes we slipped onto the grass area to get a bit closer, this time though the security officer was not having it). 200 meters is much closer than you think, when you hear the turbines accelerating then see their thrust gently lift a giant Airbus A380 at that distance, the view is breathtaking! It definitely pumps up your adrenaline level and presses you to shoot more!

An Airbus A380 take off.

On another occasion we were trying to find the right spot to shoot aircraft lining up on the taxiway, fortunately, this time it was a new officer naively escorting us. According to the tight schedule, we needed to move to the next location within one hour. So when we reached the first location, I quickly jumped out of the car and rush to the edge of the taxiway, trying to find the right angle to shoot. It was too straight on and not very interesting. We moved from left to right trying to find a new angle but no luck. More and more planes were showing up on the taxiway, like graceful swans in a dance; lined up perfectly waiting for us to shoots. Damn it, time was running out and we still couldn’t find the right place. Suddenly my fellow photographer shouted to me above the roar of the engines and pointed to a location at the right where a plane was parked. It was the perfect location, it was more angled and the parked plane provided us with cover. Once there we were again clicking like madmen, it wasn’t a bad location but this time the planes were to far apart. This meant that we could not create the intensive composition that the client was looking for. Unfortunately things did not work out but on the plus side it meant that we got to spend another day on the tarmac looking for that’.

The first try, too straight on.

We returned on the next day but were still unlucky but on the third day we struck pay dirt! The planes started coming, we were again shooting from a designated safe area 30 meters away from the taxiway. I was encouraged to get a little closer after I saw my test shots but knew this would not be allowed. I looked back at the new and somewhat naïve security officer and it seemed that she was taking a nap in the car. Then I looked at my fellow photographer, I knew instantly that he was thinking what I was thinking. Without hesitation, I recklessly sprinted across the grass and reached a point within 15 meters of the taxiway. The other guy didn’t heed the shouts of the officer and followed me. I was repentant in my thoughts … Sorry lady, as lovely as you are, I’ve got to ignore you for a while… Just this time, let me break the rule once more… I had already begun my confession, but that didn’t stop my action. I needed a better angle, the spot where we stood was simply not working.

Second try, poor visibility and wrong direction.

Whoa, when I looked through my viewfinder, I knew I’d finally found THE spot! The wow came from the other guy as well! Yes, we finally got it right! This is what we waited days to get but I knew we couldn’t stayed there for very long. The first plane was approaching and the pilot must have seen us. Surely, he would report us to the control tower if he was forced to halt the plane because two photographers were standing dangerously close to the taxiway. Subsequently, all planes on the taxiway behind the first plane would have to stop as well… can you imagine a traffic jam of planes queued up on the taxiway just because 2 fools are standing there taking photographs? Realizing that we would receive a lifetime ban from the airport if this were to happen we quickly shot a few dozen frames in less than 30 seconds and then rushed back to be scolded by the security officer.

Finally got what we wanted!

Sometimes things just happen that way. You wait for hours and make quite a few tries you still don’t get the shot you want, but within seconds we accomplished what we had not been able to do the 2 previous days! We apologized endlessly to the security officer but I was too excited to remember what her response was. I thought to myself “You didn’t know our past, lady, did you?” I felt my evil grin appear once more as a Boeing 777 roared past us to wrap up a beautiful day.