Found this on a forum, apparently from the gentleman who took the amazing photos.

His testimony is very interesting. Here

Hi all. Thanks for all your nice words about my photos.

I see some of you are looking for some of the technical info on the images. Well, they are good old-fashioned still photographs taken one image at a time at as fast as my D300 fires away (7ish frame/second, I believe). The lens was a Nikon AFS 80-200mm and my exposure was 1/1000th @ f8 ISO200.

I was actually assigned to be at the airport to get photos to advance the air show in the next day's paper and had just come from joining a military skydiving team on a media ride along where I got to do a tandem jump (that was supposed to be the highlight of my day). The spot where we landed was not far from where the jet crashed about an hour later. I had taken some images from my skydiving experience but only with a small video camera (GoPro HD Hero - a very cool little camera) taped to my wrist. I wasn't confident that I had what I needed in terms of stills for the paper so after getting my SLRs back around my neck I started photographing some of the practice flights that had begun. The CF-18 came across for what they call a high-alpha pass - a slow, low altitude maneuver - and I photographed as I tracked it pass right in front of me. Everything seemed fine until I noticed a slight dip in the angle of the wings which I thought seemed strange. In a fraction of a second I saw a number of pops from within the plane which I later realized was probably the ejection seat system firing. The plane continued it bank to the right and sliced through the air to the ground and into that huge dome of flames. It was only after that initial sequence that I took the camera from my eye and saw the pilot's parachute land clear of the wreckage. Thankfully it sounds like he is going to be ok after spending a few days in hospital.

I can tell you it was a very surreal experience to watch through my viewfinder as a plane crashed right in front of my eyes.