Technik museum, Speyer

My visit to the Technik Museum Speyer was a memorable journey through the history of aviation, engineering and space exploration. The museum is one of those places where the sheer scale of the exhibits makes an immediate impression. Instead of simply looking at photographs or reading about historic machines, you are able to stand directly beside them and appreciate their size, construction and character.

One of the highlights of the visit was being able to spend time photographing the Messerschmitt Me 109 G-4, Werknummer 13910, known as "Wiese 3". Rather than simply taking a few general photographs of the aircraft, I approached this as a dedicated detail shoot.

Many thanks to the museum staff, for making this possible.

That allowed me to concentrate on the small features that can easily be missed when viewing an aircraft as a whole: the surface of the airframe, panel lines, fasteners, landing gear and the various mechanical components that reveal how the aircraft was constructed.

The Me 109 is an aircraft that is immediately recognisable, but getting close to it gives a completely different perspective. The angular shapes, compact proportions and tightly packed engineering give the aircraft a very purposeful appearance. Looking at the details also provides a sense of the enormous amount of work and engineering that went into producing and operating a fighter aircraft of this period.

For me, "Wiese 3" was therefore more than simply another exhibit. The detail shoot became an opportunity to slow down and really study the aircraft rather than just record its overall appearance.

The other major highlight of the visit was something I had been looking forward to for a long time: seeing Buran for the first time.

Walking into the space exhibition and seeing the Buran prototype OK-GLI in person was a genuinely impressive moment. Photographs can give an idea of what the vehicle looks like, but they don't prepare you for its physical presence. The spaceplane is around 36 metres long, 16 metres high and weighs approximately 80 tonnes. 

More pictures can be found here.