highs and highs of plane spotting, The

0 Comments | DNA. Sunday; Mumbai, Feb 28, 2010 | by B, Shilpa C

One Sunday every month, a garrulous bunch drives about 25-30 km to the Bangalore International Airport. Armed with water bottles and high-end cameras, the members of this small group race against the sun to catch early morning flights, but not like frequent fliers do. It is imperative they get there before the sun gets too harsh for their heads and camera lenses. These early birds chase early birds of another kind, the kind that take off and touchdown at the airport. They are members of a plane spotters' club called Aviation Photographers India (API), the country's only recognised one, they say.

"You do get to see some very odd things," says Devesh Agarwal, one of the four founder members of the club. What those odd things are only a seasoned observer can tell. Speeding on the runway, sharp turns into exits, bumpy landings, sudden stops, planes moving on their nose wheel ... these common and rare sights are savoured and discussed endlessly during and long after spotting sessions. Once initiated, you definitely get hooked. It is, however, more than just casual observation. These spotters have almost turned runway gazing into a science and what they do is to almost obsessively document details of aircraft by using high-end cameras and lenses.

�As aircraft get ready to taxi the runway, the spotters take aim. It's all quiet except for the thap, thap sound of birds being shot dead in the distance. Then, as the vehicle glides slowly, the frantic clicking sound fills the air. The lenses peer deep into the sky until the noise of the plane becomes a distance drone. Then they are lowered. Photographs are reviewed, shared, critiqued. "To us, the flight number doesn't matter. We're only concerned with the aircraft, not the flight. Each aircraft has a registration number," says Agarwal, a true veteran who started young. Photography was a passion as a child. "I would earn pocket money selling pictures. My graduation gift was a high-end film camera," he says. The innovator who manages his own business is also an expert in all things aviation and has flown four million miles, "that's approximately 32 months in the air".� He owns a pair of glider wings. However, he's flown more miles as a passenger, he says.

�A fine photograph is one that captures and clearly establishes the identity of an aircraft.� "The images have to be "wing-tip to wing-tip sharp," says Praveen Sundaram, a "linux guy" who turned full-time photographer. Good finds make their way to networking sites and other dedicated websites like jetphotos.net, planepictures.net, planespotters.net where spotters show off their work. Most of these websites have served to popularise spotting; plagiarists make the most of it, too. "People see our pictures online and approach us asking how they too can get images like those," says Sundaram says. That's not easy. It starts off with a major recce of the place, finding and choosing a good place to shoot. These regulars to BIAL identify their spots with code names like mound, field, quarry, bund. For directions, you just have to gain their trust, which isn't exactly a walk in the park. But amateurs can begin by clicking whenever they get the chance, Sundaram says. So, the definition is simple - anyone who is interested in getting pictures of aircrafts is a spotter, even passengers who do so between the terminal and aircraft are beginners. And that's been legalised since 2004.

�Spotting is a marriage of photography and aviation. It's love for both that leads people into the hobby. Annapoorni Shanmugam - the only female spotter in the country, according to Agarwal - was thrilled when she discovered the API group on Facebook. "I had wonderment for flying machines. It is the closest thing to flying that humans can do. I am interested in aviation and photography. Now, I am learning the nitty-gritties of both," says Shanmugam who works as a quality manager at a technology innovation company.� She is doing so equipped with a Canon 300D that she was gifted by a friend. Driving all the way from Shantinagar to the airport with her eight-year-old daughter Harini in tow too on a Sunday morning "doesn't matter at all".

�Pilot-in-the-making, Avinash BL was drawn to spotting by his love for planes. "It is the excitement of being near aircraft that keeps me clicking," he says.� His passion for flying intensified during the Kandahar hijack, says the 24-year-old. "I wanted to be a pilot who would be in control of the aircraft and not let the hijack happen," he says. In his collection is a rare image of one of the two Boeing 777 freighters that Emirates has in its fleet. "Due to bad weather, the aircraft was unexpectedly diverted to Bangalore and Avinash happened to be here to catch it," says Agarwal of the youngster's accomplishment. On his days off from flying school, Avinash is known to spend all his waking hours getting shots of planes! Such is the lure of spotting.

�About a year old, API already had 25 members in Bangalore and a few more scattered across the country. More organised, the spotters are finding strength in numbers to indulge in a pastime that is often viewed with suspicion by airport security personnel. The case of the two British spotters being detained in Delhi has only put the spotters in the dock. Anecdotes of the photographers being roughed up by guards are common, too. Now, well-equipped with a card that identifies them as "harmless" hobbyists addicted to watching the runway, they climb up the 3-mtr platform erected near the border of the airport for their 'privilege view'. "I was here with my three-year-old son, clicking pictures, showing him the aircraft when a security guard appeared out of nowhere and began questioning me. It was only after I pulled out my ID did he leave," says Sundaram. He also clicks at night when the planes appear as nothing but spots of light in the sky. The answer is not banning spotting, it is regulation, he says. As for the ID card, one has to go through API which accepts new members only through referrals. "We take new entrants on casual trips, gauge their interest, screen them before applying for a card," Agarwal, the spotter credited with the paperwork that propped up API.�