Founding Members
Gary Morris
My interest in aviation started at a young age, living near to the approach of Bristol Lulsgate Airport. I visit the airport as much as possible from the mid 1980’s to the current date. My interest in aviation covers all aspects from light aircraft through to large military. I have an extensive library of images taken at Bristol Airport back through to the late 1980’s in print and slide format. I am working through scanning these images and posting them to my flickr site and website.
I have been fortunate to have images published in Aviation News and many other publications, online news sites, both aviation and non-aviation.
Simon Fewkes-Ahearne
I have been interested in aviation since I was very young, I used to visit Gatwick and Heathrow airports recording and photographing aircraft and continued this after moving to Bristol. Over the years my collection of photos has mounted up both from film and digital. My interest is mainly in civil airliners and light aircraft. I am a keen photographer and enthusiast. I co-founded and set up South West Aviation Photographers with the purpose of building a community of like minded people who all share the same passion for aviation and photography, I have always liked to keep busy and running various websites, social media pages and training for my pilots licence has helped with this! I will use my experience and training to write some interesting articles on my progress through PPL which some may find interesting.
Matt Sudol
Born and bred in Bristol, my passion for aviation stemmed after joining the Air Training Corps at 13. Whilst I can be found shooting many different forms of aviation my main passion is photographing helicopters, which takes me all over the UK and Europe.
I have had photos published by media outlets including the BBC, RotorHub and Helicopter Life Magazine. I am also privileged to be a volunteer photographer with the Great Western Air Ambulance Charity.
Kev Slade
My love of aviation was kindled originally at an RNAS Yeovilton Air Day many years ago but it wasn’t until a friend took me to the 1979 International Air Tattoo at RAF Greenham Common that I really got ‘the bug’. My leaning was towards military aircraft (three tours working at RNAS Yeovilton helped but sadly this was pre-digital so photos were limited to how much film I could afford). After getting a little bored of grey aircraft in a grey sky I started visiting Lulsgate more regularly and got to make friends with some really great people. I’ve had photos published in many books, including specialist aviation ones, and some have been used to illustrate company web sites. I even had a photo used as a ‘green screen’ in the ITV television programme ‘Silent Witness’.
Martyn East
I’ve been around aviation since near enough the day I was born with Concorde at Filton. My first aviation job was aged about 14 years old working for Compass Helicopters here at Bristol. I joined Servisair at Bristol as soon as i could aged 18 years old, then went on to various airlines based all over the UK and Europe. My job roles included Check-in, Dispatch and I climbed the ladder to Station Manager and finally Operations and Flight Operations Manager for several UK Airlines. I was involved in setting up Brymon Airways and Air 2000 at Bristol back in the 1990’s. My love of photography has been with me for well over 35 years in the form of print, slide and now digital photo’s.
Martyn sadly passed away 3rd October 2016 but will always be remembered by the other founding members for his great contribution to this group and aviation in general.
Website Contributors
South West Aviation Photographers are grateful to all our members for website content and
images, but with particular thanks to :
Tom Howe
Sean McRandle