People do not realize how busy you can get, and yes I have frozen on more than one occasion, but not arctic circle cold. Never had much luck with the lens out in the slip stream. Even slowed down the airflow is in the 70 to 80 mph range for an airplane or you have the rotor wash from a heli. Both shake a lens. Yeah they get banged around quite a bit.
Yet aerial photography can be EXTREMELY dangerous. Non pilots often do not understand the risks that low altitude and slow speed brings. I was fortunate in that I had a very highly refined backside before I ever took a camera in an airplane. Air to air photography was enough of a risk that I would not do that at any price.
Now going underground doesn't sound fun, but then again I am old and now pretty chicken. lol
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Members photographs on 11 FEB 2012
From: Robert Earnest <robert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, February 14, 2012 9:07 pm
To: List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students
<photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
@ Mark...
We were traveling forwards. I hadn’t realized it until you mentioned it but I never shoot from a hover anymore!
The last time I remember shooting from a hover was one of the first times I ever shot from a helicopter. It was in the Northwest Territories above the arctic circle shooting a camp of a diamond exploration company. I was in shorts and a T-shirt standing on the landing skid wearing a climbing harness strapped to the machine.
I found the angle I wanted and kept telling the pilot to go higher! Higher! That was when I discovered that much like diving in a lake, the air has a thermocline layer. All of a sudden it REALLY COLD!!!!
I had never been in a helicopter until then and then had 11 heli rides and even more trips in De Havilland Beavers. They even let me fly one home on the last leg of my journey but that’s a story for another time.
Nowadays, I will have the pilot do slow circles around the area I want to photograph. Once for stills and once for video. Then I might have them do wider circles. Or higher circles. Or both and even more. So, I end up with a lot of shots of any given subject. I also shoot constantly while traveling to and from the site from the starting point.
This particular shot was not the reason that we went up in the heli. We were returning to the airport and were an hour and twenty minutes ahead of my budgeted time. So, I asked the pilot to show us around town a bit to burn up the extra twenty minutes. We circled this two or three times and this image was my favorite.
I had previously been shooting in a mine and this lens was damaged. It was functioning well enough, so I used it but had to turn it in for repairs when I got back home. I think it got knocked silly but that is just the way things go. It seems fine now. Not so much for one of my video cameras. As the miners were filling the holes they had drilled with explosives I asked, “What does it look like when the blast goes off?” They looked at me like I was crazy and said that “Of course no one has seen that!!!” I told them that if the memory card in one of the the video cameras could survive the blast we were all going to find out.
It did. And it was awesome! And completely worth sacrificing a stupid camera.
Thanks for your interest.
R
