Throughout my years as a photographer, I've had the opportunity to shoot at some pretty unique locations. Whether it be driving for hours to summit a snow-capped peak, or getting technically lost in a foreign country (only to stumble on an amazing setting), it's always been an adventure. This past weekend, I was able to tick off shooting in yet another amazing location - which was essentially right on my doorstep.

Let's rewind back a few weeks for some perspective. A member of our local Subaru club sent a message to our group, mentioning that he'd arranged for us to get access to shoot at a local airport. There were however, a few caveats, namely the time - it would have to start at 6am on a Sunday morning, and was limited to 8 cars.

Well, looks like I was going to be getting up early on a Sunday!

Let's get started

Arriving at the crack of dawn, I was greeted in the car park by a few other members, two of which were on their bikes to give some variation. After a quick briefing by the organizer (remember, this is still an active airport), we headed past security and towards our designated photo area.

I should add here that I wasn't responsible for this shoot, and was technically just a participant. But the lure of being able to shoot my own car in such unique surroundings was too great, so I made sure to throw my 6D in the boot for some of my own photos.

The first location came in the form of a huge hangar. Parked inside were no fewer than 8 planes, which we had to be extra careful to not scratch. Seriously, look at the size of that main one behind us... it was without a doubt the most nerve wracking reverse parking I've ever done.

And in case you didn't know which car is mine - it's the white STi on the far right.

I'm not a bike guy, but here's a shot of them for the bike fans

We remained in the hangar for about half an hour, by which time the golden glow of sunrise was rapidly starting to fade. Now even though this wasn't my shoot, I grabbed the owner of the black GC8 next to mine and requested a few photos in the open, to which he happily obliged.

In shooting these next few photos, we had to be careful to not venture too close to the runway, as we were already essentially maybe 50 meters away from the main strip. Fortunately, being a Sunday morning, air traffic was minimal, with only a few choppers buzzing around. Besides, we had permission to shoot up until the taxiway area, so no rules broken.

See that line where the tar changes from rough to smooth? Yeah, we couldn't cross that.

Once I was done throwing a spanner in the timing works, we all pulled our cars out onto a grass patch by the hangar for some wide-open group shots. I wasn't overly sold by this setting or angle, but again - not my photoshoot. With that being said, I still made the most of it, and came back with the below shots.

Also, the white hawkeye STi was a very late arrival, so they sadly didn't get to feature in many photos.

By this time, it was approaching 7:30am, and our designated time here was coming to an end (as well as the great light - see how bland the above photo looks). I took the opportunity to grab one more photo of the GC8 STi (which is the header photo of this post), and then our time was up. In a kind gesture, the manager who gave us permission to shoot here allowed us to park our cars back in the main public car park, and then gave us a mini-tour of some of the aircraft and helicopters currently at the airport, including a Bell UH-1 "Huey" - very rare on this side of the world.

Considering that it wasn't even my shoot, I'm still pretty satisfied with what I came home with. And hey, another location ticked off the list.

Bonus Photos!

Thanks for looking!

Equipment setup

Camera	Canon 6D
Lens	24-105 F4 L Series / 50mm f1.8
Processing	Lightroom CC
Location	Durban, South Africa