I spent seventeen years in RAF Air Traffic Control, now I watch the skies for a different reason.

I spent nearly seventeen years in the Royal Air Force as an Assistant Air Traffic Controller, Trade Group 9. My job was to know exactly where every aircraft was, what it was doing, and why. That habit never left me.

When I picked up a camera, aviation was the obvious subject. I already understood the machines, how they move, where the light catches them, what a pilot is doing when he pulls onto finals. What I did not expect was how much that background would shape the photography itself. I am not chasing a lucky frame. I am reading the display the way I used to read a radar screen, working out where the aircraft will be before it gets there.

Most of my work happens at Duxford, at RIAT Fairford and at the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre, but I will travel for the right aircraft. I am just as interested in a Vulcan on the display line as I am in a Meteor wreck rotting quietly in a hedge near the Malvern Hills. Both have a story, and both deserve a proper photograph before that story disappears.

Dave Layland Photography exists to put that work in front of people who care about it: collectors, museums, magazines, and anyone who simply likes looking at a well-flown warbird. If that is you, get in touch.