This photo-essay of mine appeared in Huffington Post India on 3rd March 2015. To see it at HuffPost, please click here!
Earlier this year, 5-day Aero India 2015 in Bangalore (18-22 Feb 2015) offered a stunning visual delight for the visitors. The key reason for the show was defence-related business deals; but from visitors’ point of view, the impressive fly pasts and the daring aerobatics displays put up by various global teams was the high point. I went there for travel photography of air devils. Here are glimpses of their awesomeness!
Travel Photography of Air Devils
HAL Tejas: Its roar shook the airfield!
Despite supersonic speed, Sukhoi Su-30 MKI has a capability to land on shorter runways, thanks to a pair of parachutes opening when it lands.
C-17 Globemaster, a US Air Force Military Transport Aircraft, was the largest monster on display. This 53m long aircraft needs an airstrip of just 900mts to land, and can carry 77.5 tons of cargo.
Cheetah – HAL’s Advanced Light Helicopter – demonstrated great manoeuvrability.
Sarang Aerobatics team (in HAL’s Advanced Light Helicopter Dhruv) took our breath away with their fearless aerobatics. They crisscrossed each other just a few feet apart and flew one on top of the other, while the audience’ hearts were in their mouths as their rotors seemed to be meshing into each other like gears.
Yakovlevs, an aerobatics team from UK, demonstrated their own brand of dare-devilry. They flew past each other at great speeds and flew upside down for the most part.
Breitling (UK) and Catwalk (Sweden) shared the honours of bringing a ‘first’ to India – both teams had a pair of wing walkers engaged in gutsy midair ramp… er… wing walks. Catwalk team stole a march over the Breitling team with their tricolour contrails display.
Wing walker team of Breitling (UK)
Catwalk ready for take off
Catwalk flying low
Catwalk wing walker
Catwalk Tricolour Triptych
The most audacious aerobatic display was mounted by the Red Bull team flying Zlin Z-50 air-crafts from Czech Republic. Besides the upside-down manoeuvres, they were also flying extremely close. As a result, two red bulls crashed into each other midair, but the pilots managed to land the damaged birds safely, despite one plane suffering a major crack in its wing.
If you’d like to know how to shoot these supersonic machines zipping about in the skies, email at travelure@travelure.in
Ajay, your photos are gorgeous as usual! I especially liked helicopter shots.
And that mid air collision was so scary. You have captured them so well.
Thanks, Nisha! Mid air collision was a chance capture. I saw these aircrafts take-off, do some manoeuvres for a short while and then doing a sudden bumpy landing. That’s when I reviewed my captures and discovered they had collided!
This got hugely stumbled yesterday.
U may want to take a look!
https://t.co/GFBvHtxPi3
From https://t.co/om49efAuHg https://t.co/mSmfGWvvoh
Lovely shots. Glad to know that the pilots of the planes that crashed made it safe down. These things are scary
Thanks, Ami! Yes, that midair collision was scary!
Oh wow! These shots are fantastic and how brave those pilots must be…some really scary-looking loops there!!!
Thanks, Jey! those guys weren’t brave. They were downright lunatics!
Beautifully captured. Although I imagine looking at all that through a lens would have been quite dizzying! Love your work, I will be looking for you on IG
Thanks, Kate! With or without a camera, the scene was dizzying alright! BTW, my IG handle is also Travelure!
Red Bull gives you wings indeed. OMG. As always, incredible shots. I love the multinational collect that displayed together.
Thanks, Rob! I don’t know if you noticed the last triptych – of two Red Bull aircrafts colliding midair. That was something! I didn’t realised they had collided till I saw them land bumpily and then started to review my captures!
How cool. We have several air shows near me in Florida plus alot of fantastic ones before NFL football games.This one looks very amazing and your photos are just jumping off the page. Beautiful!
Melody, I have been to two airshows – both times in Bengaluru (2009 and 2015). I just loved the experience. Thanks for your words of appreciation!
Wow those pilots are crazy! I haven’t seen an airshow in person but it seems like it would be a pretty amazing sight!
Kevin, you bet it is! Because of their speed, one doesn’t realise what kind of dare devilry they are up to. But once I looked at these images, I went ‘Wow!’