Monday 27 November 2017

Introduction to CobraEmergency's blog

Hello and welcome to my new blog.

I'm Steven, better known as CobraEmergency. I'm an emergency vehicle spotter based in the UK with international connections.


London Fire Brigade Mercedes-Benz Atego Fire Rescue Unit
call-signed 'Alpha Two Three Six' at Euston Fire Station. 
Photograph taken by CobraEmergency.
What is an emergency vehicle spotter?
An emergency vehicle spotter is someone who has a huge interest in emergency vehicles and the emergency services that use them.
Like train spotting, they go to various locations across the world and film, photograph or document emergency vehicles responding, on scene, in demonstrations or just out and about.

The hobby, which is known to have originated from 'fire buffing' (in America) in the 1950s, has gained huge popularity in the 21st century with the availability of social media such as YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook...etc. where many emergency vehicle spotters have their content.


Photograph by Pete Markham of a modified Ghostbuster's car.
How did I get into the hobby?
Growing up, like any other small boy, I had a huge fascination with fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, military vehicles...etc.

I'd regularly go to events and get to ride in these vehicles, pose for photographs with them and of course my favourite bit - play with the sirens!
When ever I watched films like Spiderman or Ghostbusters I'd be fascinated by the emergency vehicles I saw which made me want to see more videos.

YouTube had not long came out when I got interested in 2007. I'd spend hours watching police chase videos, gaming videos featuring emergency vehicles and the few emergency vehicle responding videos that I could find.


A Vico Equense municipal police car in
Italy. Photograph by CobraEmergency 
Italy 2008
When I went to Italy the following year I shot my first photographs of emergency vehicles.

All though the photographs weren't that good, with common mistakes such as cutting the edge of the vehicles out, it was a start!

How-ever I must have lost interest around this point as I didn't start again until almost four years later in 2012.



The Olympics 2012

All though I hadn't officially started emergency vehicle spotting in 2012, when the Olympic Torch came to my home town of Malvern, in 2012, I had to film the convoy which featured West Mercia and the London Metropolitan Police.


The video, seen on the right, was filmed with my mobile phone as unfortunately my camera (which I had in Italy 2008) had stopped working. Again the quality was poor, but it was a start.

In this video can be seen several new BMWs belonging to both West Mercia Police and the London Metropolitan Police.



2013 - When I officially started!


It was on May the 31st I officially started. Filming my local air ambulance - the Midlands Air Ambulance, taking off from a crime scene. This video has since been deleted in a clear out of the files on my computer (big mistake!).

A few months later I founded CobraEmergencyVideos when I went spotting for emergency vehicles in the city of Strasbourg, in eastern France (seen in the video on the right).

From there on-wards I started spotting emergency vehicles under the name, CobraEmergency, which is now well known throughout the community.



Manhattan Beach Fire Department Rescue (Ambulance) 21 at Station 1,
Manhattan Beach, California, USA. Photograph by CobraEmergency.
Blogging what I do!

From November 2017 on-wards I've decided to blog what I do as more and more people gain interest in emergency vehicle spotting.

Since starting in 2013 I've gained a huge following as I have filmed hundreds of emergency vehicles across the United Kingdom and now the United States of America.




So I will provide short-briefs of days out spotting emergency vehicles, highlighting some of my catches with photographs and videos, as well as news and any incidents or events I attend.

For those keen readers out there, feel free to provide me feedback on how I can improve.
I hope my future blogs are of interest to you. 😤

Check out my pages for more: