Official Club calendar 2024 – February photo
During 2024 we are presenting the image from the Club calendar for that month in the newsletter, with some details about the picture, including when and where the photo was taken.
This month we feature the dramatic photo for February, which was entered into the calendar competition by Club member Shaun Parkes.
He tells us, “The picture of the BBMF C-47 Dakota with the air load master waving from the door was taken at RAF Coningsby on 7th May 2021. It was one of my periodic visits to RAF Coningsby to photograph whatever was going on at the time, and I was thinking that it must be getting close to PDA Day so there was a good chance of seeing BBMF practising their routines. The weather on the day was a bit overcast, the light wasn’t great, but at least the overcast skies gave plenty of clouds to use as a backdrop. The image was shot on a Nikon D6 body with a Nikon 200-500 lens with a 1.4 teleconverter, at f/9 at an exposure of 1/1250 second at ISO1250. I processed the image to reduce the amount of digital noise, and then in Adobe Lightroom I adjusted the sliders for Exposure, Highlights, Shadows Texture, Clarity, and Vibrance, to enhance the aircraft against the background sky and clouds, and cropped the image slightly to enlarge and centralise the aircraft in the frame.”
Shaun went on to say: “Of all the individual BBMF aircraft, the Dakota is one of my favourites as it reminds us of the part played by the transport aircraft, dropping supplies to the Chindits in the Burma campaign, and to the Airborne Forces at Arnhem in September 1943 where Flight Lieutenant Lord was awarded a posthumous VC for tenaciously pressing on to drop his supplies to the hard-pressed Paras shortly before crashing.”
The RAF Memorial Flight Official Club 2024 calendar is now on sale at the reduced price of £7 including postage and can be purchased by telephoning the Club office on 01905 570727, or you can pick one up for the reduced price of £5 (because no postage is required) in the Visitor Centre at RAF Coningsby. To read more about the calendar please click here.
