Air2Air with Richard Mallory Allnutt
There are good aviation photographers and there are great aviation photographers. At Vintage Wings of Canada we’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the best - Eric Dumigan, John McQuarrie, Seth Goltzer, Peter Handley and Richard Allnutt to name a few. In the months ahead we will be profiling all of them on our website. There are many who think that all it takes is a seat on a B-25 and a behemoth camera to guarantee great images. This may guarantee good images, but not great ones.
It takes the talent and creative spirit of someone like Richard Allnutt combined with a passion for the flying machine and its place in history to produce the great images - images that evoke emotions, make us linger on the details and put us there in the “delerious burning blue” as a Grumman Wildcat thunders past - on its way to some reckless fight over the Pacific. By virtue of his British birth, Allnutt was imbued with genetic passion for vintage aircraft and in particular fighting warbirds. A professional shooter now living in the Washington DC area, Allnutt chases the ultimate-air-to air shot like a hunter stalks big game - with persistance and patience.
Here are just a few of his amazing photographs and his notes about the time and place they were taken.
Lead Photo: I had a pretty exciting experience at the MAPS air show in Akron, Ohio in 2005. We got up with five other warbirds: a Wildcat, Dauntless, Kate replica, Zero replica and a PBY Catalina. The weather was really murky, so we climbed all the way to 3,500 meters to do the shoot. It was bloody cold in the back of "Panchito"! The wind really rushes through when the waist hatch, and the tail turret are removed from the aircraft. But what a view! Steve Craig brought his beautiful F4F-3 Wildcat in for some stunning photographic opportunities. This aircraft is the only airworthy, non-folding wing Wildcat. It is one of the few aircraft raised from Lake Michigan to make it into private hands.