Retired commercial pilot, with a military background (the clues are here!)

www.flickr.com/photos/68498610@N03/albums/72177720302395637/

I spent my early years living near London's Heathrow Airport, and I blame my mum for my aviation obsession! She used to pick my siblings and I up from school and take us to the spectators car park on the perimeter road, which in the late 1960s was a grass field, to watch the aeroplanes. I can still see the line of landing lights of arriving traffic on runway 28R at dusk.

I joined the Royal Navy on leaving school and trained as a helicopter pilot. I then switched to fixed wing aircraft and left after eight years to pursue an airline career. I ended up flying 747s for a well known British airline, which was great for my aviation photography as it deposited me in various places around the globe.

Having got properly interested in aviation in 1972, I bought my first SLR camera (a Praktika LTL) in 1976, upgraded to a Canon AE-1 in 1982 and switched to Canon digital in 2006, although I had a Fuji digital point-and-shoot for a couple of years before that.

I'm slowly wading through my back catalogue of unedited digital images, and also have thirty years of slides to scan and edit at some point!