Best in the Desert’s Parker 425 off-road race is a huge event in Parker, AZ. Attended by thousands of people with hundreds of entries, the race begins just before dawn and ends — at least for some racers — after nightfall.

The course stretches about 30 miles across the open desert east of Parker, zig-zagging on existing dirt roads, including more than a few power line roads. The land out there is mostly old sand dunes like those shown in this photo. (This photo was taken from about 800 feet AGL; the dots are bushes about 3-5 feet tall.) The land here is remote and mostly barren. A bold pilot could fly 50 feet AGL without fear of hitting anything. Except, of course, the power lines.

This was my third year flying at the race and, by far, my busiest. I flew for three separate clients and even took a local couple for a quick ride so they could photograph their business and home from the air. I learned a bunch of things that I want to document here, for my own reference and for other pilots’ consideration.

Navigating

Finding your way around the course can be a challenge. If you don’t stay on the track, you can easily lose it in the vast empty desert. This is especially true if there’s been some rain and there’s no dust. If there’s dust, you can see the racers from miles away with just a few hundred feet of altitude.

Track locations are identified by mile number. There are no visible markers, though — that would make it too easy. Instead, if you’re lucky you have a copy of the course map and have secured it to something so you can consult it in flight. Remember, at least one door is off, so the wind is whipping around the cabin and loose paper is not an option. Although you could put all the mile markers in your GPS, that would make quite a mess. So I just have about 10 points in my GPS and I can use them to home in on the point I need to get to.

The Photographers

I flew a total of three professional videographers, one professional photographer, and three amateur photographers around the race course this year.

Let’s take a closer look at the video guys, since they’re the most interesting to me. We’ll call them A, B, and C.

• Two of the three videographers (A and B) were seasoned professionals with either prosumer or professional video equipment. They were a pleasure to work with. The third (c) was a young guy who was obviously very new to the game. He was doing video with a Canon DSLR hooked up to an awkward shoulder rig. His attitude was cocky and he didn’t seem able to either give or follow instructions. In fact, he didn’t seem very alert and I wonder whether his young mind is fully operational. (More on that in a moment.) After the flight, when we were settling up the bill (paid by his client), he told his companion that he was going to charge extra for the aerial work. (As if he’d paid for the helicopter.) I was so put off by his attitude and behavior that I will not fly him again — and that’s something I seldom say.
• One of the videographers (A) claimed he weighed 260 lbs. I added 10 pounds, as I usually do, for clothes and equipment. I then calculated my weight and balance several ways, hoping he’d choose a back seat location with his 190-lb still photography companion beside him. Earth to video professionals: If you want to do aerial photography from a helicopter, slim down. If you want OGE hovers and aggressive maneuvers, your pilot will need all the performance he can get.
• Only one of the three videographers (B) had ever shot video from a helicopter before. He understood the benefit of sitting behind the pilot so the pilot can see what he sees. He probably got a lot more and better video for his time because of the simple fact that he didn’t have to direct me. I could see the racer as well as he could. The other two videographers didn’t understand the importance of positioning. A insisted on sitting in the front, despite the fact that his heavy weight in such a forward position made us front-heavy (see W&B charts here), which, in turn, limited my maneuvers. The only reason C sat in the back was because he was accompanied by a still photographer and I had to put them both on the same side so they could shoot at the same thing at the same time.
• Because A sat up front, he shot at least 50% of his video through the front bubble window of the helicopter. I estimate that 75% of that video will be unusable because of glare.
• Only one of the videographers (B) had ever worn a harness before. I’d brought mine along and he was very happy to have it. He climbed right in and hooked up. I had to assist the other two with the harness. Tragically, C did not fasten the seatbelt behind him before sitting down and the buckle slipped out of the open door during flight. Dangling there in the slipstream, it did serious damage to the paint on the left side of the helicopter. I can’t imagine how he didn’t see or hear the metal buckle banging, but, as I said earlier, he wasn’t entirely there.

The Flying

The flying can be intense. I’ve written about it before, so I won’t go into very much detail here. Perhaps a more analytical look is in order. I can break the flying down into different phases or activities:

• Point-to-point travel. In most cases, the photographer(s) on board are interested in shooting just one or maybe a few specific vehicles. When they get on board, they often have a general idea of where those vehicles are. So if the photographer tells you the truck just passed mile marker 38 and you’re at the airport, you have to haul ass out to the middle of the desert to pick up the truck somewhere beyond mile marker 38. The best way to do that is to cruise at top doors-off speed — which is 100 knots for an R44 — in as straight a line as you can. Avoid the track to avoid other aircraft. Pick up the track somewhere around the mile marker where the truck was when you left the airport 20 or more minutes before and drop down into the next mode: search.
• Search mode. In search mode, you’re actively looking for a specific vehicle. You have the vehicle number and usually know what kind of vehicle it is (i.e., truck, buggy, jeep, etc.) and what color it [mostly] is. If you’re lucky, you have a photo of the vehicle — one of my videographers (B) had an excellent illustrated sheet that actually had photos of the four trucks we needed to find, all on one page. So in search mode, you drop down low enough to actually read the numbers on the roof or hood or side panel of each vehicle. The very best way to do this if you don’t know where the vehicles might be is to move backwards along the track so the vehicles are coming to you as you’re moving towards them. This way, you pass more vehicles more quickly. But if you’re playing catch-up, you’re coming up behind the vehicles. They’re doing 30 to 120 miles per hour, depending on the vehicle, driver, and road conditions, so there’s often up to four minutes between vehicles, especially after the first lap. The whole time, you’re watching out for other helicopters and obstacles while you and your spotter/photographer are trying to identify vehicles as you pass them. When you find the one you need, someone usually shouts out, “That’s it!” and you drop into the next mode: chase.
• Chase mode. In chase mode, you pair up with the vehicle, putting the photographer(s) in position to shoot. That often means dropping down to 50-100 feet over the desert floor. It almost always means matching the speed of the vehicle you’re chasing. On straight, smooth stretches of road — like one of the power line roads — the vehicle could be going over 100 miles per hour. On roads cutting through lava beds or through canyons or zig-zagging around high tension power line towers, the vehicle could be moving at just 30 miles per hour. The pilot’s job is to keep on the target, always watching out for obstacles and other aircraft, listening to the instructions of the photographer: higher, lower, faster, slower, right, left. It’s tricky when you don’t have brakes or 0-to-60-in-5-seconds acceleration capabilities. I prefer having the photographer sit behind me so I can see the action as well as he can, but that’s not always possible. With two photographers on the left side of the aircraft, I usually can’t see the vehicle — although I can often hear the sound of its engine and passing horn — through my noise canceling headsets and over the sound of the helicopter! — if I’m properly lined up with it. When the photographer has enough footage shot alongside the vehicle, he sometimes asks me to position myself for what I call photo mode.
• Photo mode. Let’s face it — minute after minute of footage shot alongside a racing vehicle can get dull after a while. A good videographer will vary his shots. So I might be asked to circle the vehicle or cross in front of it or behind it from a certain direction at a certain speed. Good videographers can envision the shots and I’ve done enough work with them to envision them, too. I also use photo mode in locations where the track bends and curves around itself. “The Python” at the Parker 425 is a perfect example. It’s supposedly 11 miles of track in an area roughly 1/2 mile by 1-1/2 miles in size, right next to the airport. The pits are in there, too. There are lots of banked curves, short straightaways, and huge humps in the road. Spectators all around, just ready to get hit by flying sand as they snap photos with their cell phones and feel the adrenaline surge with each roaring truck that passes. This is what the photographers want to capture — real action. And this is where an inexperienced pilot or an overweight aircraft is most likely to get in trouble. There’s hovering and tight turns at low altitude. Add a crosswind or tailwind and flying in photo mode is a recipe for disaster.

Conclusion

This was my best Parker 425 ever, in terms of work. It was also my most costly: between the ferry time, which was only partially compensated, two overnight stays with meals, and the damage to the side of my aircraft, I’ll likely net zero profits for the trip. But it was a good experience and a lot of fun.

I really do love this kind of flying.

Note to Readers: If you have any photos or videos of a bright red Robinson R44 in action over the Parker 425 for 2008, 2009, or 2010, please get in touch. I’d love to show it off on this blog or the Flying M Air Web site.

I got the initial call about a month ago. A videographer from the east coast had to shoot aerial video footage of two properties in the Mesa/Chandler area of Arizona. Was I available?

There was more to it. The videographer was looking for someone who could fly 20 to 40 knots sideways so he could get point of view (POV) footage out one of the rear doors (which would be off, of course). He planned to use a Tyler Mini Gyro and would likely be dangling his legs out the helicopter door while shooting. He had his own harness and had worked with R44s before. This, however, was his first experience with the Tyler mount.

I met him at Falcon Field in Mesa, AZ last Tuesday. We met at the Heliponents ramp. I knew Barry from Heliponents from a shoot he’d done at Monument Valley about two years before. He’d been flying either a JetRanger or a LongRange helicopter and they’d put a full-blown Wescam ball with counterweight on his ship. I’d been based at Monument Valley, at the Goulding’s airstrip to provide helicopter flight services for aerial photographers at the valley for a few days. We chatted briefly. I remembered him; he remembered me.

The Tyler Mini Gyro and its packing case, along with its run-up battery and the camera used with it. The mount can support much larger cameras.

Heliponents has a Tyler Mini Gyro that it leases out by the day. This $30K+ device is kind of like a monopod with a heavy duty, gyro-stabilized mount on top. There are springs in the monopod base, which is short and designed to sit on the user’s lap or between his legs in use. A large battery box provides 28 volt power. There are two adjustable handles to hold the entire thing. The camera goes on top. The two main parts — base and tripod leg– get tied off to the photographer or aircraft so it can’t fall out during flight.

I should mention here that I’ve done some work with video and gyros and wrote a lot about it here. We’d used a much smaller mount from Blue Sky Aerials called a Micro Gyro Mount. Our conclusion was that the best solution would have three gyros. This Tyler mount, although much more difficult to work with in a tight space, had three gyros. I was very interested in seeing the results.

Here’s my client, posing for a photo before we started up and took off.

Barry and my client got the system set up. Barry ran up the gyros using one battery pack but planned to send us on our way with another, fully charged pack. I pulled both back doors off the helicopter. My client climbed into his harness. We brought the equipment out to the helicopter and wedged my client into the seat behind mine with it. We secured the big battery on the floor, then tied off my client and his equipment to the helicopter. He put his seatbelt on, too. I shot this photo before climbing in to start up. A while later, we were headed southeast, toward the first of two targets. I’d prepped in advance by converting the addresses to GPS coordinates using GoogleMaps, so we didn’t waste any time looking for the spot. We were on point within minutes of taking off.

The first site was difficult, with lots of high tension power lines. We needed to get footage of a golf course and two different clubhouses. My client likes sweeping, point-of-view shots, which meant I needed to do a lot of sideways flying while he shot straight out. The area was too confined to do any fast flying, but we did the best we could. One of the better series, which we repeated several times, had me flying sideways from north to south with the late afternoon sun at our tail. I’d start relatively high, off property, and come down lower as I flew in, breaking off near the clubhouse. The whole time, I was monitoring Falcon Field’s frequency, since we were right on the edge of its airspace.

We made quite a show for the folks on the ground, which is unfortunate. The video is supposed to just show the place from the air — but not with people gawking or waving (or perhaps shaking their fists?) at the camera.

For me, it was great, challenging flying. Sure, there are challenges in the other kinds of work I do, but aerial photo flying with a professional photographer who isn’t afraid to tell me exactly what he needs me to do is the most challenging of all. It forces me to really work for my money and it gets me in “the zone” — that place where I become one with the helicopter. And there’s nothing more rewarding than doing precision flying to complete a pass and having my client complement me when I’m done.

Of course, I have to admit that it was also easy. There was very little wind — less than 5 mph — and my single passenger weighed roughly what I do. The temperature was in the 80s, so density altitude was not an issue. I had no trouble flying sideways or even maintaining a lengthy, completely motionless, out-of-ground-effect hover. I couldn’t have asked for better precision flying conditions.

After spending at least 30 minutes over that property, we broke off to do the second property, which was farther south, in Phoenix Mesa Gateway (formerly Williams Gateway) airspace. As I was making contact with the controller, my client realized that the power cord had pulled out of the camera and the gyros had spun down. We flew lazy circles around the property for a good 10 minutes, giving the gyros a chance to spin up again. Then it was back to work shooting a clubhouse and some sports facilities. I think a shuffleboard competition was going on because the courts were full. The shiny court surfaces reflected the colors of the flags that flew on poles above them. And we realized that the folks waving to us from the pool might just be good footage to meet the marketing requirements of the videos.

We left Gateway’s space, then returned to our first property to redo a bunch of footage. We weren’t quite sure when the gyros got disconnected, so we redid most of it. Then we headed back to the airport. We’d flown over an hour on the mission; I’d also be billing for about a half hour or ferry time from my base in Deer Valley. (I’d like to note here that if I were still based in Wickenburg, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the job at all; no one wants to pay more for ferry time than mission flight time.)

Back at Heliponents, my client didn’t waste any time reviewing the shots he’d taken on a small video monitor he’d brought along. Most of them were great. He was very pleased. And I felt the kind of pride I usually feel when I realize that my helicopter and I form an important part of a photography client’s equipment.

As for the Tyler Mini Gyro, it costs roughly the same as the Blue Sky Aerials Micro Gyro Mount to rent (when you factor in shipping) and has the additional benefit of being available locally. I’m not sure, but it might be easier to use, too. While I think it’s overkill for my own little HD video camera, it’s a good match for the camera this client used or even larger models. I’m hoping I have an opportunity to recommend it to clients in the future.

This afternoon, while looking through some photos to send to an editor, I stumbled upon one I’d forgotten all about. This isn’t a great photo, but it’s a cool photo. The kind of photo I want to share with others. It doesn’t show off my photography skills, but it tells a story all by itself.

I realized that I had a lot of photos like this. Photos that weren’t good enough to make it into my Photo Gallery but were certainly worth sharing. So I figured I’d create a new meme for them in my blog: Found Photos. I’m hoping to fill it with the kind of fun photos we all have but hesitate to share because they’re not quite “perfect.”

The first photo in the series, Wheat Harvest, is a good example:

I must have geotagged the photos I shot that day; iPhoto provided this location information.

I shot this image through the plexiglas window on my friend Jim’s helicopter. We were flying from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho to Chelan, Washington. It was late afternoon. Jim was at the controls and I was shooting photos. When we came upon these combines, our flight turned into an impromptu photo shoot, with Jim swooping around to put my into position to get the shots. One of the shots, “Combine in Action,” ended up in my Photo Gallery. But this one seemed too goofy to include. After all, it includes the helicopter shadow and everyone knows that you don’t want your shadow in your photos.

Or do you? This is kind of fun, isn’t it? Seeing the helicopter’s shadow on the ground with the two combines? All going the same way?

The picture has problems. Focus is off and the horizon, which I probably should have excluded, is not level. I think it also shows the curvature introduced by the camera’s 28mm wide-angle lens. I could have done better if the door was off and I was trying a little harder. But we were just having fun and I think this picture shows that.

I’m back in Washington and so is Jim. Last year, we promised to take turns flying and shooting photos. Before the end of July, I’ll remind him of our promise and get some new photos from the front passenger seat in his helicopter.

Just thought I’d take a moment to share this photo with blog readers. It was taken by Bryan using my Nikon D80 and 10.5mm fisheye lens. He was sitting in the back seat; I was sitting up front with Ryan at the controls. Bryan snapped this shot from between the two seats as we were flying over Lake Shasta in northern California.

Yes, I know we look a bit distorted. That’s the lens in action. But can you get an idea of the view? Huge front bubble window, big side windows. Even the back seats have a great view.

Yet people still take tours of places like the Grand Canyon in airplanes, where they’re lucky to get a limited view out one window.

Go figure.

A lot of people think that aerial photography is easy. Go up in an aircraft and snap a photo. What can be easier than that?

Truth of the matter is, it’s not as easy at it seems. Mike and I learned this a while back, when we attempted to provide aerial photography services when I owned an R22 helicopter. And as a business person, photographer, and pilot, I have a unique perspective on the topic.

The way I see it, problems fall into three areas.

Client’s ability to accurately communicate what he wants a photo of.

Some clients — those are the folks who want the photos — simply can’t communicate what they want a photograph of. Couple that with their unreasonable expectations of what the photographer can do and the photographer’s failure to communicate his limitations and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

Take, for example, one of our early photo shoots. A guy owned 10 acres of land southwest of Wickenburg. He hired us to photograph it from the air so he could use the photograph as a selling tool. What he failed to explain is that he expected a straight-down image, almost like a super zoomed in satellite view. The aircraft that take those kinds of photos are airplanes with belly cameras flying at 10,000 feet or higher. We can’t shoot straight down with our setup. The client said he wanted a photo of his land from the air. When we provided a very usable image from 1,500 feet up, slightly to the south, the client was very disappointed.

If you’re reading this as someone who needs aerial photos of a specific place, take the time to talk to the photographer and tell him exactly what you need. Draw pictures if you have to. Make sure he understands and can deliver what you need.

Photographer’s ability to communicate what he wants the pilot to do so he can get the shot.

This is the one that I, as a pilot, run into all the time. This problem appears to break down into three separate causes.

• The photographer thinks I’m a mind-reader and that I know what he wants to shoot, so he doesn’t provide instructions. When I don’t get the aircraft in the right position, it’s my fault because I couldn’t read his mind.
• 
  My helicopter was part of the equipment for this shot by Mike Reyfman. We were in an OGE hover 2,000 feet above the canyon when this plane came into view 1,000 feet below us.

  The photographer doesn’t understand exactly what a helicopter can do. Yes, if it isn’t too windy or we’re not too heavy or high, I can hover on point so you can get the shot. Yes, I can make a sharp turn — left or right — around the target. Yes, I can climb almost straight up (or descend almost straight down) to change the angle of the shot. Yes, I can fly sideways, at slow speed, to keep the target in frame. Yes, I can chase the target at almost any altitude or speed needed, keeping the target in front, beside, or behind the aircraft. But if the photographer doesn’t ask for any of these things, I’m not going to volunteer them. After all, I’m just the pilot — not the photographer.

• The photographer seems almost afraid to ask me to fly the way he needs me to. Maybe he’s flown with other pilots in the past who simply would not perform the maneuvers he needed. (I get a lot of my Phoenix-area photo business because one local helicopter operator refuses to fly below 300 feet or slower than 60 knots — not exactly flexible enough for aerial photography.) Some photographers may believe that all helicopter pilots set arbitrary limitations on how they’ll fly and don’t want to push. I don’t know about you, but if I’m paying a pilot $450/hour to fly me around to get the shots I need, I’m going to ask him to do exactly what I need him to do. If he says no, I won’t push. But if he says no to everything I ask, I’m not likely to call him again.

Pilot’s ability to put the aircraft where it needs to be to get the shot.

Sometimes the pilot just can’t do it. This could be because of lack of skill, lack of aircraft performance capability, or lack of space for maneuvering the aircraft:

• 
  My buddy, Jim Van Sky, was flying his helicopter in central Washington state last summer when he put me in position to get this shot. Jim is a highly skilled pilot with plenty of experience taking photographers around. It was a pleasure to shoot with him at the controls.

  Skill is pilot-specific. Either he has the skill or he doesn’t. He might not have it this year, but he might have it next year — that’s why it’s always a good idea to work with an experienced pilot. I know I can safely perform certain maneuvers now, at 2,100 hours flight experience, that I couldn’t even dream of performing when I was still building my first 1,000.

• Aircraft performance is aircraft-specific. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard photographers choose an R22 instead of an R44 or an airplane instead of a helicopter just to save a few bucks. When will these people learn that the aircraft is part of the equipment? Would you do the shoot with a disposable camera if a professional level Nikon or Canon were available? Yeah, the pro camera will cost more, but it’ll do a much better job. The same goes for aircraft. Airplanes simply lack the flexibility of helicopters for serious aerial photography. Yes, you can often get the same shot from an airplane, but it’ll take the pilot twice as long to get into position and to get back into position for the next batch of shots. And while you’re getting into position, you can’t get all those other interesting shots you might see because the wing strut or prop or some other airplane component is in the way. (And yes, there are exceptions to this, but they’re mostly customized solutions, such as the aircraft flown by photographer Adriel Heisey.) As for R22 vs. R44 (or any other larger helicopter), unless both you and your pilot weigh under 150 pounds and you’re flying with half tanks of fuel at sea level on a cool, calm day, you’re asking for trouble flying a serious photo mission in such a small aircraft. It simply does not have the performance needed for challenging maneuvers or high density altitude operations. The photographer in this aircraft learned the hard way.
• 
  My husband, Mike, took this shot of Rainbow Bridge a few years ago. It’s tough to get a shot better than this from the air.

  Location isn’t always accessible. Sometimes there just isn’t enough room in the air around the target to get into position. Here’s a good example. I take a lot of photographers over Lake Powell. Many of them want to shoot Rainbow Bridge, which is in a deep, narrow canyon off the lake. Because of the nature of the canyon and its surroundings and the weird wind patterns that sometimes set up in there and the general high density altitude conditions that prevail at Lake Powell, the closest I can get to Rainbow Bridge is about 500 to 1000 feet above it. I won’t hover there — if we get into a settling with power situation, there’s simply no way out. I always do it as a slow fly-by, circling as needed. That’s the best I can do. Part of it is skill and part of it is aircraft performance (or my understanding of it though 800 hours of stick time in that aircraft), but most of it is the sheer difficulty of the terrain around the target. I’m not willing to descend down into a canyon that I may or may not be able to safely climb out of. There are plenty of other places like this where, for one reason or another, the aircraft just can’t get into the perfect position for the photographer to get the shot.

And then there’s the photographer.

I was a passenger on my own helicopter when I shot this view of San Francisco with the marine layer moving in beneath us.

None of these points take into consideration the photographer’s skill, his choice of lenses and other equipment for the shoot, and the suitability of the subject matter for aerial photography.

Some photographers just don’t “get” aerial photography. That doesn’t mean they won’t. It just means they need to think it out beforehand, give it a few tries, analyze the results, and try again until they do.

Or maybe it just isn’t for them.

But when done right, aerial photos can be a truly amazing look at our world.

Those of you who have been following this blog know that I’ve been working on a series of video projects for some time now. The projects were stalled for a number of reasons — raw video that remained uncataloged, miscommunication between me and the video crew, the holidays, and the discovery that much of the video we needed was either not acquired during our October shoot or was of insufficient quality to move forward on the projects.

This whole thing has been a huge learning experience for me in so many ways. And I’m sure that someday, I’ll blog about some of the other lessons I learned the hard way.

Today, however, I want to focus on the lessons I learned about capturing video from a helicopter. This is a long post, but I think it’s worth reading if you have any interest in shooting video from a helicopter without spending a fortune on equipment.

The Camera

Back in December or January, when I’d cataloged about 2/3 of the raw video that had been shot in October, I realized that we needed to “make up” some shots. For reasons I’d prefer not to go into here, I decided that it would probably be better for Mike and I to fly up to the location — Lake Powell near Page, AZ — and get the missing footage ourselves.

I’d bought a Sony HDR-CX12 Handycam before Christmas in preparation for getting some of the footage we’d need for the projects. At the time, I didn’t expect we’d need to capture so much of it. Had I known, I might have chosen a different camera. But the quality of images from the Handycam is truly amazing — a fact we discovered when we hooked it up to an HD TV with a HDMI cable in January. Holy cow!

I should mention a few things about this camera.

• It’s amazingly small and light. Weighing in at 1 pound, 4 ounces on my postal scale, it’s like holding nothing. My digital SLR with the 16-200 lens it normally wears is a good 3 times the weight.
• It does not have a viewfinder. Instead, you frame your images by looking at a tiny LCD monitor. This might not be the best solution for folks who have trouble focusing on things close to their faces.
• It uses Memory Stick PRO Duo media, which are tiny little cards that go into a slot at the bottom of the camera. I’d bought a bunch of 4GB cards so I could easily archive each card to a single layer DVD. As a result, we could record only 28 minutes of high-definition video — we’re talking 1080i here — on each card.
• Its wide angle view is not very wide. While this eliminates the chance of distortion, it also requires that the subject be far enough away to fit into the camera’s view.
• And have I mentioned that the quality of video shot with this camera is absolutely amazing? It’s equal to or better than much of the footage originally shot on this project using professional camera equipment.

The First [Re]Shoot

In late January, Mike and I flew up to Page for the day to capture some of the video that had been missed on the original shoot. This included historic Hole in the Rock and a lot of “big view” sequences of the lake. We had other business in Page — I’d bought a hangar there and wanted to give it another inspection since the previous owner left. I also had some business in the terminal building. We made a day trip of it and shot about 20 minutes of raw footage over the lake with another 10 minutes of footage over the Little Colorado River Gorge.

For this shoot we set two options on the camera:

• Part of the original footage we needed to replace was bad because of a focusing issue. The videographer’s camera was unable to lock in focus on certain areas. As a result, every fifth or tenth or twentieth frame of the video was blurry. The net effect of this was what appeared to be camera shake. But a frame-by-frame examination of the video clearly revealed the truth — the camera wasn’t focusing properly. This made video that simply could not be fixed or used. We headed off this potential problem on our camera by switching the camera to “Landscape” mode, which would automatically set focus on distant objects.
• The camera comes with a featured called SteadyShot. The description of it in the camera’s configuration window is “Compensates for camera shake in recording.” This feature is turned on by default. It appeared comparable to the “image stabilization” feature in other camcorders. Since we were flying in a helicopter, which is known for vibrations, I figured that the SteadyShot feature would be helpful to smooth out the video.

We got home and I looked at the footage. To say I was extremely disappointed is an understatement. As you can see in the following representative clip, the SteadyShot feature hadn’t done enough to steady the video. What we’d shot was mostly unusable.

The Gyros

Time marches on. The project was going nowhere fast. There were other difficulties that, again, I prefer not to detail here. Things were getting ugly. And a client I’d promised a 4-6 minute video clip from the final video was calling, asking when I’d deliver. I needed to get the project done. I needed to start bringing in some revenue to cover my losses.

So I did some research on gyro mounts that could stabilize the image and get out the shake. One of my still photography clients several years ago had used a Keynon Labs Gyro Mount. I went to the Kenyon Labs Web site and called them to get some information. It appeared that the KS-4 Gyro Stabilizer might resolve the vibration/shake problem. The unit in a kit that includes power source, charger, and other accessories would cost me $2,000 to buy. I wasn’t interested in making that kind of investment until I knew whether it would do the job. Fortunately, the folks at Kenyon Labs (and their distributors) rent the gyros. I arranged a weekly rental for $200 and timed it so it would arrive midweek. We’d return to Page the following weekend.

The gyro arrived on Tuesday. I was in Phoenix that week and had brought the video camera with me. We tested it one evening by driving around in the car and shooting video out the window. While the gyro did eliminate any vibration, the video was far from steady. We thought it might have something to do with rough roads and the car’s tight suspension. But we weren’t sure.

Discouraged, I decided to try the Handycam/gyro solution from a helicopter. After all, that’s what we’d be shooting from. So I rented an R44 helicopter and pilot for a half-hour test shoot in the Phoenix area. I got back to our Phoenix apartment, plugged in the camera, and had my fears confirmed. The vibration was gone, but a wobbly roll element had been introduced. You can see what I mean in the following sample footage:

This made perfect sense. The gyro stabilized on two axes: pitch (up and down) and yaw (right and left). Roll, the third axis, was not controlled. Since it wasn’t controlled, the camera was more likely to move that way.

If this was the quality of video I could expect, it wasn’t worth the four-hour roundtrip flight from Wickenburg to Page plus the time over the lake to do a reshoot. If I were smart, I’d cut my losses and give up on the idea of us getting the footage we needed.

But I’m stubborn and not willing to give up so easily. So I went back to the Web and continued researching. I e-mailed Aerial Exposures, a Keynon dealer based in New Jersey who uses their gyros from helicopters in the New York Metro area. The owner of the company, Arnie, very kindly called me back to chat about my problem. He provided a number of suggestions on holding the camera/gyro in flight. He also explained that the best solution would include two gyros on a mount — the second gyro would eliminate the roll movement. Aerial Exposures makes mounts — mostly large ones for use with big cameras in helicopters. His smallest mount, the LSG-2 (shown here), might meet my needs. He also suggested the Micro Gyro Mounts made by Blue Sky Aerials in California, which also sold and rented his mounts. He gave me the phone number for the company owner, Tom, and told me to call him.

I called and talked to Tom. By this time, it was Thursday morning and we were supposed to head up to Page on Friday afternoon to arrive right around sunset. Tom and I talked about his Micro Gyro Mount HDV KS-4, which used two Kenyon KS-4 gyros. He’d rent me the mount with one gyro and I could use the other gyro I already had with it. That would save me money. Trouble was, Tom was out of town on assignment and wouldn’t be back in his office until that night. But he promised to put the gyro kit on a Southwest Airlines flight first thing in the morning; I could pick it up at Sky Harbor Airport around midday. (I didn’t even know you could do things like that.)

On Friday, I picked up the gyro mount and headed back up to Wickenburg. I had a billion things to do before we’d depart and didn’t even get a chance to open the case until after 4 PM. We pulled the gyro and battery charger from Kenyon out of its case and put it in the case with the Blue Sky Aerials mount. We grabbed some tools, packed up the helicopter, and took off.

It was a good thing we left when we did. It was dark when we got to Page. This isn’t a city kind of dark. It’s a dark kind of dark. Real blackness beyond the town’s lights.

The Second [Re]Shoot

We were in the air the next morning, just after dawn. I’d fly, Mike would shoot. He sat up front beside me. Both our doors were off. It was cold.

The Micro Mount was quite portable, but still heavy with nearly 7 lbs of gyros and camera attached to it. We flew all the way up the lake, stopping at Cal Black Memorial Airport to fuel up and warm up. We shot all kinds of footage we’d missed or covered poorly on the first shoot, including the Defiance House Ruins, Hole in the Rock, the Great Bend in the San Juan River, and the Rincon. It was four hours of flight and we filled all five of the 4 GB memory sticks. We landed at noon, feeling good about the shoot and starving. So we ate first, then went back to the hotel to look at what we’d shot.

It wasn’t pretty. There was still considerable shake in the images. Not a vibration and not really a roll. Just a general unsteadiness.

We were discouraged but still not ready to give up. Mike rigged up a bungee cord system to hang the camera and mount from. This had been suggested by Kenyon, Arnie, and Tom. We had hesitated because we weren’t quite sure how to set this up. But necessity is the mother of invention, so we figured out a way. We did a late afternoon shoot and came back to the hotel to look at what we’d done. It wasn’t much better.

Sunday was forecasting high winds — up to 60 miles per hour — in the afternoon. We had two options: pack it in and head home in the morning or do another shoot in the morning before the winds picked up, relax in the afternoon, and fly home on Monday after another morning shoot. We decided to stick it out. Did I mention we were stubborn?

SteadyShot

Sometime around this time, I started thinking about the SteadyShot feature of the camera. What exactly was it?

Before embarking on this shoot, I’d used my Twitter connections and Sony’s technical support (useless) in an effort to determine whether SteadyShot should be turned on when the camera was attached to a gyro. I never got a definitive answer, but the consensus was that it wouldn’t hurt. I was starting to wonder, though.

I pulled out the manual, which I’d printed (since Sony neglected to do so) and brought along. I put on my cheaters to read the tiny print (I’d printed it 2 pages per sheet to save paper) for the fifth or sixth time:

STEADYSHOT
You can compensate for camera shake (the default setting is [ON]). Set [STEADYSHOT] to [OFF] when using a tripod (optional), then the image becomes natural.

What the hell did that mean? The Sony support person had been unable to explain in a live chat that only proved how well Indian/Pakistani support staff can use macros and scripts. There was no other information in the entire manual — 115 pages of it — about this feature. And an online search of Sony’s support Web site had failed to explain.

What if I turned it off for use with the gyro mount? Tom had suggested trying it both ways. Maybe it was time to take his advice.

I turned SteadyShot off and we hopped into the rental car for a ride. Mike shot video out the window at distant cliffs. We came back to the hotel and looked at the results. The video looked better.

Could this be the answer?

The next morning, we shot some more video with SteadyShot disabled. We used the bungee solution. The light was pretty poor, with thick clouds that sucked the color out of the landscape, so we didn’t get much video. (We were pretty demoralized at this point.) We went back to the hotel to look at it. It looked better, but still not perfect.

We talked about the possibility of it being a smoother flight in the back seat of the helicopter. We resolved to try that the next day.

We took our cameras and tripods down to Lower Antelope Canyon. We spent three hours down there, hiking the whole thing in both directions. Above us, the wind kicked up, sending fine sand down on our heads. I don’t think I’ve ever used my blower or lens brush as many times in a single shoot. We were literally the last people out of the canyon. The Navajos had closed down both Upper and Lower Antelope Canyon due to high wind.

Then we went over to Wahweap Marina. That’s where I shot this telltale footage. I’d turned SteadyShot back on while doing handheld work in Antelope Canyon and had forgotten to turn if off when I put the camera on a tripod. I happened to take a shot of Tower Butte with the camera zoomed all the way in. The wind was howling, blowing at least 30 miles per hour, shaking the tripod ever so gently. Check out the effect on Tower Butte in the sample footage below. Looks like heat rising off the desert in front of the butte, no? It wasn’t.

(I should mention here that the image quality is otherwise inferior for three reasons: image compression for online viewing, full zoom in of camera, and dust storm in progress when shot.)

“Set [STEADYSHOT] to [OFF] when using a tripod (optional), then the image becomes natural.” It now made sense. SteadyShot was doing something weird inside the camera’s software to steady the image. This was introducing wave-like image distortions.

The problem went away as soon as I turned SteadyShot off.

The next day, we went back out for more video. Overnight, there had been slow flurries. Although there was no accumulation in Page, there was a nice dusting uplake on the cliffs and buttes. It made for an interesting contrast. Mike sat in back, behind me as we reshot Hole in the Rock and did a run up the Escalante River for the benefit of my POV.1 “nosecam.” We landed, took a break that included a trip to City Hall and a stop at Starbucks for hot cocoa — it was 0°C in the air and a door was off — and went out for one more shoot. Then we got back to the airport, returned the rental car, packed up the helicopter, and headed home.

We’d flown a total of 12 hours, including ferry time.

That last bit of video was the best of the shoot.

Image Stabilization

Still with me? I know this is a long story, but it does document the entire trial and error process of the shoot. Keep reading. It gets better.

Back home, I found myself with several hours of new video, most of which wasn’t much better than the video I already had. It was time to look into image stabilization.

Yesterday, Mike did a bit of homework for me. He found three possible solutions on the Web, all of which worked with Mac OS (sorry, I don’t do Windows):

• iStabilize by Pixlock was a $60 solution, available as a demo. I downloaded it and thought I’d try it first.
• Apple Shake by Apple was a $499 solution that had a boatload of additional features I might or might not use. The demo movie you can find here is very convincing.
• iMovie ‘09 by Apple was software I already had. I had never tried its image stabilization. Frankly, I didn’t think it would be any good. Tom had suggested it, but I thought he was just trying to be nice by suggesting an affordable possibility.

Mike came into my office to ask if I’d tried iMovie yet. I told him I hadn’t. He urged me to do so. We imported a 3-minute clip from my camera archive with image stabilization analysis enabled. The dialog that appeared told us it would take 24 minutes to process.

I spent the time watching a Lynda.com video about the feature so I could see how it worked. When the processing was done, I called Mike back to look at it with me.

The difference was mind-blowing, as you can see in the following video. The original video is in the inset box; the stabilized video is in the main frame. Compare the wobbliness in the inset box to the smoothed out version in the main frame:

We repeated this exercise for video shot at different times during the weekend. Then video shot on our first [re]shoot. Then video shot around Phoenix in my single-gyro test. All of the video was improved. In many instances, video that had been unusable was now not just usable, but good.

The Final Solution

After all of this trial and error effort, we’ve come up with what we think is the best solution for making high-quality video from a helicopter with high-end consumer camera equipment. (The Sony we used retails for $899.)

• Mount the camera on at least one gyro. A two-gyro solution like the Micro Gyro Mount would be best, but with a $4,200 price tag, it’s hard to swallow. (A single gyro like the KS-4 is still tough to swallow at $2,000.) Renting is a definite option.
• Use a bungee cord attached to the aircraft above the camera and attached to the mount near its center of gravity. This reduces the weight in the cameraman’s hands. The bungee should obviously be the right length to ensure comfort for the cameraman. It should also be firmly affixed to the aircraft and camera so it doesn’t spring loose in flight. (Obviously, the camera and mount should be attached to the cameraman or airframe with some other non-stretching device, in case it’s dropped.)
• Seat the cameraman in the back. There seem to be fewer vibrations back there, at least in an R44 helicopter.
• Turn OFF software stabilization features in the camera. If they’re as crappy as Sony’s SteadyShot feature, they’ll just make the image worse.
• Set the camera to Landscape mode, if available, or manual infinite focus.
• Set the camera to full wide zoom. If you zoom in, you will likely have horrible, shaky footage.
• Shoot at the highest available resolution. This will come in handy later, when stabilizing video in post production.
• Use a neutral density filter on the camera. This generally made for a better image. (I did some testing of this before the shoot. The colors seemed richer with the filter on.)
• Run any video that shows any undesired camera movement — shake, roll, etc. — through image stabilization software after it has been shot.

Obviously, it’s a good idea to practice with your camera setup before the shoot so you’re really familiar with its operations. When you’re spending $450/hour or more for flight time is not the time to be learning. And I shouldn’t have to tell any serious videographer about the importance of light.

Many Thanks

I’d like to end this blog entry with a big thanks to all the folks who helped me come up with this solution:

• Randy and Bobbi at Kenyon Laboratories were extremely helpful and patient on the phone while I tried to decide whether I should rent their gyro.
• Arnie at Aerial Exposures provided lots of insight and encouragement. His solutions are a bit more complex than I need or want, but for serious aerial videographers, they’re definitely worth considering.
• Tom at Blue Sky Aerials provided incredible customer service to ensure that I got the equipment I needed more quickly than I thought possible. He also followed up to see how we were doing during the shoot. I hope to one day be able to justify the purchase of his Micro Gyro Mount, which I think is the best solution for our limited needs.
• The iLife Development Team did an amazing job incorporating image stabilization features into iMovie ‘09. For $79, I have a complete video publishing solution that, while not quite up to the task of a major DVD project, can certainly handle my immediate needs. Way to go, Apple!

I’d also like to throw a big, fat, rotten raspberry in the general direction of Sony and it’s technical support department for wasting my time during two different online chat sessions. If the information I needed were available in the manual or online or in the tech support database, I would have gotten better video from the start, probably with just one gyro.

If you learned anything from all this or you have anything to add, I’d appreciate your comments.

And I hope you’ll keep checking in at Flying M Productions; we hope to have our first DVD available soon.

After several false starts, I’ve finally managed to put together a short trailer for the video project I’ve been working on since October. The project is stalled right now due to circumstances beyond my control, but I hope to get it back up and running soon and have the DVD ready to ship by the end of April.

Until then, I hope you enjoy the trailer I put together today.

You can find a higher resolution version of this short video on the Flying M Productions Web site’s new Trailers page. You’ll need a fast Internet connection to smoothly access the 29 MB file. The file is in QuickTime format and if you have QuickTime Pro installed, you should be able to save it to disk. Feel free to share it with your friends.

Your comments are always appreciated. Go easy on me, though. This is my first foray into the world of Final Cut Express.

I just read “The Shot” on Helicopter Pilot, Will Travel. (If you’re a helicopter pilot and you don’t read this blog, you’re really missing out on something valuable.) The post was about aerial photography and the difficulties in getting good shots.

I was a passenger in a friend’s R44 when I snapped this photo.
It was the best image of about two dozen attempts.

I started to write a comment on the post, but soon had more words than a polite commenter should be leaving on someone else’s blog. So I figured I’d just turn my blather into my own blog post on the subject.

I do a lot of flying with photographers and video folks on board. A lot of it is “fine art” photography in places like Lake Powell and Canyonlands National Park. There’s also some commercial photography — bridges, highways, buildings, etc. And lots of “action” photography and video of racing boats and off-road trucks.

I absolutely love this kind of work — especially the high-speed chase stuff. It gives me an opportunity to get “in the zone” with the aircraft. I usually sit the photographer in the seat behind me so we get the same view. This makes it easy to stay on the target.

It gets challenging when slow flight is required — especially if it’s windy or if we’re in high density altitude. I’ve gotten to the point where I know when to expect a settling with power situation and can recover from it quickly, with the minimum loss of altitude. I’m also smart enough to avoid it any time I’m flying low-level.

The quality of the photographer’s work varies greatly. There’s a video guy I work with on off-road races that’s incredible. The four of us — me, my helicopter, the video guy, and an up-front observer — make an excellent team. I’m not sure if it’s my ability to fly close to the racing vehicles or his ability to manipulate the camera — probably a combination of both — but his footage is mind-boggling.

The fine art photographers’ work depends on lighting and where we’re taking the photos. The southwest U.S. landscape is amazing, but early in the morning, just after dawn, or late in the afternoon, just before sunset, I really think it’s impossible to take a bad photo.

You can tell the experienced aerial photographers from the newbies by the equipment they bring — mostly lenses. I’ve had people show up with zoom lenses that not only forced me to fly far from the subject matter to get it to “fit” in the lens, but let in so little light that shutter speed was an issue.

On the other side of the coin is a photographer that always mounts his camera on a hand-held gyro stabilizer to minimize the vibrations coming in from the helicopter. I’m actually thinking of investing in one of these devices, so I can rent it to the photographers that fly with me. Being more flexible with shutter speed would give them more flexibility in terms of composition.

Gunsight Butte on Lake Powell.
My husband was at the controls while I snapped photos.

Unfortunately, I seldom get to try my own hand at aerial photography. You see, both hands are usually busy with the controls in my single-pilot R44. I did get an opportunity to fly with a fellow pilot in his R44 in Washington State last summer (see combine photo above), but more recently, I’ve begun doing some doors-off flying with my husband, who is also a helicopter pilot. We take turns playing with the camera. The shot accompanying this post is one of mine from a recent flight to Lake Powell.

One thing Keith is certainly right about in his post — it can take an awful lot of tries to get just the right photo.

I did another flying gig out at Parker AZ again this year. It was wicked windy on the ground when we took off — so windy, in fact, that a Bell Jet Ranger pilot refused to fly. (I didn’t think it was that bad, but then again, I’m not flying a Bell.)

About 100-200 feet up, however, it was dead calm and I was able to do just about any maneuver the camera guy needed. I had an excellent observer on board who kept an eye out for wires and other helicopters without freaking out when I intentionally got close to either one.

For the first flight, we chased the truck featured in the video below, as well as a dune buggy like car. I don’t know the technical terms for any of these things — I’m a pilot, not a dirt racer.

For the second flight, it was windy. We were videoing the guys coming into their pits and a lot of hovering was required. I could only hover when pointing into the wind, which was gusting to 28 knots. When we flew around the trucks in the “Python” area of the course, I couldn’t fly slowly enough with a wind up my tail so I did a lot of circling, keeping the target where the camera guy could keep his camera on it.

In case you’re wondering, our usual setup is to have the camera guy behind me with his door off. (If it were warmer, I probably would have had my door off, too.) This makes it easy for me to see what he sees and keep the car in sight. The observer sits up front next to me. Although I keep a good eye on what’s around me, he’s a second pair to make sure I don’t miss something important.

After the second flight, I could see that bad weather was literally minutes away. After putting the doors back on and estimating that I had enough fuel to get home, I took off. I called the airport later to pay my fuel bill and was told that the downpour started 10 minutes after I left.

I flew a total of 3.9 hours, including ferry time. Judging from the video, I think the guys got just what they wanted.

My husband and I flew up to Lake Powell the other day to take care of some business. Among our chores was a photo flight up the lake as far as The Rincon (about 79 miles uplake from the dam at Page).

Mike took this shot as we began our flight uplake. It features Padres Butte, which is known by local tour pilots as “submarine” because it looks like a submarine conning tower. There was very little wind on the lake the reflections were outrageous. The lake is as blue as ever, but if we’d taken this shot later in the afternoon, the buttes and surrounding cliffs would have looked much redder. This shot was taken around 1:30 PM.

Mike was shooting still photos while I shot video. He’s a pilot now, so we had the dual controls in. When he shot, I’d fly. When I shot, he’d fly. It worked out pretty well. We had both our doors off, so there’s no glare. We were, however, pretty darn cold — it was only 50°F up there and when you’re cruising at 80 knots with the doors off, you can’t help but get cold.

I have more photos from this trip and I’ll be uploading them to my photo gallery as I share them here.

A while back, I wrote a blog entry about my foray into the world of tilt-shift photography. Although I have no interest in investing cold, hard cash in the hardware to do real tilt-shift photography, I learned how to fake in in Photoshop by reading “Tilt Shift Photography in Photoshop Tutorial.” I was pleased with the results and found the whole thing fun and rather addictive.

Today, I stumbled upon a site that fully automates the entire process: TiltShiftMaker. You upload a photo and it applies the unfocus mask, which you can adjust. You toggle a check box to determine whether you want colors enhanced. It then spits out a photo with the effect applied, as shown below. Any idiot can do it. Even me.

The photo I started with was an aerial shot of the Grand Coulee Dam, taken this summer when my husband and I flew down the Columbia River. There’s nothing special about this shot; I didn’t even bother to spruce it up for this experiment. So the colors are a bit washed out and the framing is far from perfect:

After processing with TiltShiftMaker’s default settings, it looks like this:

For a quick and dirty tilt-shift, it ain’t bad. I tried to manually modify the original image using Photoshop and my results weren’t significantly better. Sure, I had a lot more control over the amount of blur, the size of the in-focus area, and the amount of saturation to give it those punched-up colors, but when I compared my final product to the automatically generated one, I had to admit that the automatically generated one looked more like a photography of a model scene.

But it certainly does take the fun out of playing around with this technique.

To me, the real challenge of faking tilt-shift photos comes from trying to take photos that would work well as fake tilt-shift miniatures. Aerial photos are great for this, especially if they include buildings and/or cars. They can’t be straight-down images, though. They need to be shot at an angle, so there’s an obvious reason for one portion of the photo to be in focus while the other parts are not.

Anyway, if you’re interested in this sort of thing, give TiltShiftMaker try.

In November, Mike and I took the helicopter to the San Diego area for business. The flights to and from San Diego were over some of the most interesting — and boring — desert terrain out there.

Our route to San Diego from Wickenburg (E25) took us southwest, skirting around the restricted area north of Yuma, where we landed for fuel. (Fuel there was $1.20/gallon cheaper than at my home base.) Then almost due west along I-8, over the Glamis Dunes and Imperial Valley, which lies below sea level. Finally, a climb over some mountains and a descent down to Gillespie Field (SEE).

On the return flight, we took a different route. We flew east along I-8, then northeast to the northern tip of the Salton Sea to Chiriaco Summit and then along I-10 to Blythe, where we refueled. (The fat guy is gone.) From there, we overflew Quartzsite before making a bee-line for Wickenburg.

You can see the approximate routes below; click the map for a larger view with readable labels.

Mike’s got his 100 hours of flight time in helicopters, so he’s legal (per my insurance company) to fly passengers. So he did most of the flying. I had my door off for the Yuma to El Cajon part of the flight and took photos — mostly over the Glamis dunes. It was nice to be a passenger for a change — to be able to use my camera without left-handed contortions. I also had the POV.1 video going for part of the flight, although the sound crapped out part of the way.

Anyway, here are a few of the photos I took on the flight. You can find more of my aerial photos — as well as larger versions of these — in my photo gallery.

Glamis Sand Dunes

Formally known as the Algodones Dunes or the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area, the Glamis Dunes is a huge series of sand dunes west of the Colorado River, northwest of Yuma, AZ in California. The dune field stretches 45 miles north to south and 6 miles east to West. This photo shows only a portion of the dunes, looking north from the I-8 area. The dunes are extremely popular for off-road vehicles; this photo was taken on a relatively quiet Friday morning.

Sand Dunes

Here’s a closeup shot of the Algodones Dunes from the air. This shot was taken from about 500 feet above the ground, over I-8, just west of the Arizona-California border.

Desert Freeway

The folks back east probably have no concept of the long distances of nothingness on a freeway that cuts through the desert. This shot of two tractor trailer trucks passing each other in the barren wasteland of the Imperial valley’s southern extremities might give them an idea.

Desert Mountains

The mountains just seem to go on forever in this aerial shot of mountains in southwest Arizona, not far from Quartzsite. Lake afternoon light casts long shadows.

CAP Canal

The Central Arizona Project (CAP) snakes its way through the Arizona desert, bringing water from the Colorado River and its lakes to Phoenix and its suburbs. This shot was taken just north of Hope, AZ on our return flight to Wickenburg.

Forepaugh Ranch

This ranch is nestled at the base of two hills in Forepaugh, AZ, out of sight from the main road (Route 60) only a mile or so away. It reminds me of an earlier day of ranching, when remote ranches were self-sufficient homes on the range.

[I'd originally written this as part of my post titled "Digital vs. Film," but pulled it out in an effort to shorten-up that post and keep it more focused on the topic. You might find it interested if you think you might want to try your hand at commercial aerial photography.]

I think it was in 2003 that Mike and I decided to try our hands at aerial photography. I bought a book about it (as I usually do, when I want to get a jump start on learning something) and the book said the best kind of camera for this kind of work was a Pentax 67. The camera was huge and heavy and took 126 film, which could not be processed locally. But that didn’t stop me from plunking down $1,500 for a used one. You gotta spend money to make money, right?

The Pentax 67 turned out to be a huge mistake. Although the camera had an internal meter, it did not have automatic exposure. So each exposure had to be set using its meter before snapping an image. Since I was doing the flying, Mike did the photography. He’s set the exposure on the first shot and use the same exposure for the entire shoot. You might think that would work, but it doesn’t. As the helicopter approaches the target from different angles, the sun hits the target differently. Some images were under exposed while others were overexposed. 2/3 of the images were not usable. And because we didn’t know this until nearly a week after the shoot — after the film had come back from the out-of-town processors — we didn’t know until then how bad the results were. We did two reshoots — at my cost — before I decided that camera was not for us. I sold it for $1,000, swallowing a $500 loss after owning it for about a year. Ouch.

I bought a Canon G5 camera. This was a regular digital camera that looked a bit like an SLR. But although it had all kinds of automatic, program, and manual settings, it did not have interchangeable lenses. It did offer 5 megapixel resolution, however, and that was a huge number in those days. We tried our hand at aerial photography with that. The results were better — at least the exposures were good and we could see them immediately — but my photographer was having trouble properly framing the subjects and our clients evidently had different ideas of what their property looked like from the air. I decided to give up on providing photography services. If a client wanted aerial photography, I’d be perfectly happy to do the flying for them, but they’d have to come up with their own photographer.

I’ve since purchased a Nikon D80 with multiple lenses. We’re playing with aerial photography again, but I’m still not interested in taking on any commercial assignments with either Mike or me snapping the pictures.

You can see some of our aerial photography efforts (with more to come) in the Flying M Photos gallery.

I’m extremely pleased to spread the news that one of Flying M Air’s best clients, Mike Reyfman, has won an award in the Pilsner Urquell International Photography Awards. His series of photos of the sandstone canyons uplake from Rainbow Bridge has taken first place in the “Abstracts” category. Here’s one of Mike’s photos, reproduced with his permission. You can see them all here.

I’d like to add two things here.

First, whenever a photographer who flies with me wins an honor or publishes a photo taken from my helicopter, I feel a great deal of pride. Although I didn’t frame the image and snap the photo, I do feel as if I’m part of the photographer’s “equipment.” My small part in any great photo makes me feel good.

Second, Mike offers photo excursions all over world. Although most of his clientele are from Russia (where Mike is originally from), I’m pretty sure he’ll take anyone who can speak either Russian or English. Lake Powell is only one of the destinations he comes to regularly; he’s also taken groups to Iceland, the Pacific Northwest, New Zealand, and lots of other places I wish I could go. Aerial work is only a small part of some of the trips he offers. You can learn more and see Mike’s gallery of photos from his travels on his Web site.

And thanks, Mike, for letting me know about your award! Congratulations!

One of the things that’s so frustrating to me as a pilot and photographer is that I can’t do both activities at the same time. You see, when I fly, my hands are full. I can’t let go of the cyclic to frame a shot — the helicopter would begin aerobatic maneuvers that would make me sick (or worse). So although I get to see some pretty amazing things from the air, I rarely get a chance to take a decent picture of any of it.

So I was tickled pink today when I went through my Google Alerts and found that photographer Ann Torrence had mentioned me in two recent blog posts. In each post, she shared a photo she’d taken from the left seat of my helicopter when we flew from Page to Marble Canyon and back on August 16.

The first post shows a great — and very unusual — shot of Horseshoe Bend. Everyone takes the same picture of this place, primarily because they all take it from the same viewpoint, on the east side of the cliff. But when you’re in a helicopter, above the terrain, you can shoot from anywhere. And as I circled this outrageous bend in the Colorado River, Ann shot from the northwest. As she said, it’s the first time she’d seen it from that angle. And it’s the first time I’ve seen a picture taken from there.

The second post shows the two Navajo Bridges — historic and newer — over Marble Canyon. Marble Canyon is the extreme starting point of the Grand Canyon. It’s a narrow, deep gorge cut through relatively flat rock plateau. As I used to tell my Grand Canyon passengers, it was named by John Wesley Powell, one of the original explorers of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, who thought the walls of the canyon were made of marble. (They’re not.) From the air, it looks like a crack. Ann’s shot of the bridges is pretty good, although I did have a passenger take a nice shot for me, years ago, from the other side of the bridge looking downstream. Trouble is, the bridge is in restricted airspace, so you can’t just fly around it. You can only fly past on landing or takeoff from Marble Canyon’s little airport.

I should point out here that there are other images taken from my helicopter in the Page, AZ area on the Web. Photographer Mike Reyfman has a number of galleries of Lake Powell and Monument Valley. And at least one photo taken from my aircraft in this area has wound up in a Cessna magazine ad.

Anyway, I’m up in Page, AZ, offering photo flights in the area through American Aviation. I’ll be here through the end of September and possibly into October. If you’re in the area and want to see a different perspective for your photos, give American a call at 928/608-1060. They’ll set you up for a photo flight you’ll never forget. And maybe — just maybe — you’ll get some photos as good as Ann’s and Mike’s.