The Los Angeles Air Show 2014


The air show rocked. The pilots were brilliant, planes were spectacular and show was all it was cracked up to be. Lots of exhibits and vendors too; with the most expensive water and soft drinks ever witnessed — and tours of fancy planes, RVs and other exhibits.

Inside the fences the people were overall quite manageable; crowded at the fence but less and less as you stepped back. Really really fun for sure with everyone generally getting along quite well. Outside was a bit of a mess – with traffic coming off multiple freeway exits and fights nearly breaking out at the points in which the roads merged. The police direction started much closer to the entrance, so this no-mans land felt quite a bit like the wild west.

One big problem with the show was the people who “reserved” their fence space by tying up clothing and chairs to keep people away from their precious space, or positioning barriers between their chairs to avoid people walking through (as opposed to simply moving their chairs together). This created quite an obstacle course. Also, there were a number of bad behaving folks who would reserve their fence space and then abandon their area leaving unoccupied premium real estate. While bad behavior to begin with, one moment escalated when a “show photographer” helped some of these bad behaving folks by preventing others from stepping into the unoccupied spaces. Not nice and completely unprofessional to reward bad behavior under the guise of officialism. The show really does need to educate their photographers on basic etiquette skills.

So while this was a bit of a problem, it did not overshadow the core allure of the show; and the power and skill of these master pilots. The show welcomed back the Navy’s Blue Angels and they were spectacular beyond my wildest expectations.

Here are a small collection of photos from the event:
http://www.marknicholasonline.com/Portfolio-Specialty/Events-and-Occasions/Los-Angeles-LA-Air-Show-2014/

Lastly, and certainly not leastly, this show allowed me to test for the very first time my brand new Canon 200-400mm lens. I’ll post a review shortly.  That said, I hand held the lens for the entire time, the images were great, although there was a bit of a learning curve with the more awkward design of this piece of master gear.

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