Description
This image shows Pilot Officer Bill Auckland at the controls of a British Aerospace Harrier GR3, preparing for the RAF’s 70th anniversary on April 1st 1989, as the later GR5 versions fly overhead. The Harriers had been in service for 20 years when I made this image and flew their last operational sorties in 2010. Based at RAF Wittering, not far from where I live, they often used to fly over our house.
It took me several months to persuade the RAF to let me do the shoot which was made using a home-made remote release and a Canon 14mm rectilinear wide angle lens on a Canon F1 film camera.
Photo © John Robertson, used on The Guardian front page, 4th March, 1989.
John Robertson is a creative and imaginative photographer , whose work has appeared in the pages of the Telegraph, The Guardian and many other papers.
He also has a considerable commercial portfolio in both still and video photography.
He has been given many awards during his forty years in the industry but he takes most pride in twice being voted UK Regional Press Photographer Of The Year.
His images have a humour about them that brings light relief to the pages of the heavy weight press.
One of the many assignments for John was this picture of a leaping Cockerel. John had put an idea to the Guardian about an event at a local Gallery. As part of the publicity the gallery had arranged for a Peterborough Morris dancer to be dressed in his cockerel outfit to help promote the event.
John tells us, ”I’ve always liked to think outside of the box and on this occasion that box was the gallery, piled up with paintings and sculptures. If you put forward the assignment yourself, then as a freelance you have to be darned sure that it works visually!
