Photographers descended on Wanaka at the weekend hoping to do the same.
Wol Nelowkin, of Canberra, Australia, is just one of many aircraft photography enthusiasts who arrived with at least two cameras and the intention of taking thousands of digital images a day during the three-day Warbirds Over Wanaka airshow.
Mr Nelowkin, who also came to the Wanaka airshow in 1996, has a wealth of airshow photography experience, racking up between 100 and 150 attendances at similar events throughout Australia over 40 years.
"I'll take two to three thousand pictures, using eight gig card and digital cameras. With everything that's happening here, I can easily take one thousand a day," Mr Nelowkin said.
He would spend about two or three days sorting shots and cataloguing them and making selections to upload to two websites.
"Years ago, when I raised my camera to take a photo, people looked at me like I was some sort of geek. Maybe they thought there was something wrong with aircraft photography, but with three million hits since, there must be some interest in them," Mr Nelowkin said.
He is one of 10,000 photographers worldwide, who contribute to airliners.net, which has at least five million pictures on its site.
He also files to jetphotos.net.
Mr Nelowkin became interested in aircraft photography in 1961, the same year he photographed Trans Australian Airline's first Fokker Friendship F-27.
In his early days, he used a Pentax camera but in 2002 he changed to Canon digital cameras.
He brought a Canon EO540D with a long lens and a Canon 350D with a short, small zoom lens to Wanaka.
"The little one is for close up, when they [planes] are on the ground."
