In 1991 I was one of hundreds of photographers who descended on RAF Lyneham for the return of hostages  Terry Waite, the envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the journalist John McCarthy;

I remember that it was a cold wet day when Terry Waite
Returned, after couple of hours waiting, all our cameras were so cold that when a couple of  hundred of us ran into the hanger for the official
welcome and speeches, all our cameras steamed up with the
change in Temperature and there was much frantic wiping  of lens's to record this historic Moment.

When the journalist John McCarthy returned it was dark and we had to wait a couple of hours while they kept saying he was due soon, but as it got darker I have never seen so many photographers
uncertain  of what to do, few of us had experience of flash photos of  someone emerging from a plane two hundred feet away. Some of the Fleet street lads persuaded ground staff to take flash meters out to where the plane would stop to check the exposure, I decided  to use fast film and the 300 mm  f2.8 at 125th on the unipod on a ladder on the back of a trailer,  It worked O.K. as there always seemed to be another flash firing as I clicked the shutter.