Ron Shoots

Wrapped up the aerial shoot today! We left Los Angeles mid-morning hoping for the marine layer of clouds to pull back so we could shoot scenes along the beach on the way down to San Diego. Unfortunately, the clouds and fog hung around for most of the trip but we managed a few shots of Huntington pier, Laguna Beach, San Clemente and La Jolla.

Can’t plan the weather!

That’s the tough part of location work- you never can plan the weather! Originally, we were scheduled to shoot San Francisco, but a winter storm prevented us from going much further north than LA before the clouds & rain took over. If you look at the map above, the only section we were able to work was the Southwestern quadrant of the USA. The beauty of shooting stock is the flexibility. While I need to deliver marketable images, the best strategy is to continually adjust production plans to maximize available opportunities.

Trip Stats

The pictures are what count- these stats are just pure fun! Over the last 5 days: 2600 miles, 165mph top speed, from 27 - 87 degrees, 14186 highest altitude, 224Gb of image files and 631 gallons of Jet A fuel. Only 5 states. Oh yeah… 13 power bars.

One of the image styles I’m testing is to use the motion of the helicopter and a slow shutter speed to make the ground look like its zooming past the viewer. Tough effect to achieve! We need a flat space of 1 to 2 miles without any obstructions for safety. The best effect is also during early morning or late afternoon when its easier to achieve a slower shutter speed due to diminishing light. I’m using a gyro-stabilizer attached to the Hasselblad to help keep the camera movement to a minimum.

On this shot, we found a train headed west outside of Flagstaff, Arizona in a wide open area. The train was rocking along about 70mph. The pilot matched his speed to that of the train at 20-30ft off the ground while I leaned out the window to shoot.

Pretty cool effect!

We left Sedona at 7:30am for Phoenix, about a 45 minute flight. We shot around Scottsdale on the way to downtown Phoenix. Don’t think I’ve ever seen so many golf courses- there must be a golf hole for every person in the town!

Loving a tailwind!

After Phoenix, we headed west towards Los Angeles. Since there’s nothing but miles of desert and not a ton to shoot, we were cooking along at 165mph- about 30mph faster than normal. (With the price of Jet A fuel at 3.89/gal and a helicopter that sucks 28 gallons/hr, a tailwind is much appreciated…)

Eye-to-eye with the FAA

Once we arrived LA, we refueled and plotted our photo spots. The highlights would be freeways & traffic, Long Beach Harbor and the Los Angeles airport. Flying in the LA airspace is intense- lots of other airborne traffic. Just about every sector is controlled by an airport tower that needs to know where you are, how high, where you’re going and what you’re doing! Fortunately, the pilot I’m working with has flown in the area for years.

Absolutely amazing to me is that you can fly a helicopter right into the middle of LAX. The tower needs to give approval to cross the runways and then you’re in. We hovered at 1500ft right over the tower, then landed at the helipad for a few minutes before taking off again.

Anyone who knows me reasonably well knows that I have never met a dessert tray that I didn’t like! Today, we started out at sunrise in Monument Valley and then flew north toward the canyon lands in Utah. Unbelievable! Everywhere we turned was another incredible scene. Whether 1000ft tall cliffs or 1000ft deep canyons, we were surrounded by amazing photo opportunities… hard to choose… so I shot them all! (78Gb today)

High Point of the Day (literally)

After Utah, we headed east towards the western edge of the Colorado Rockies to shoot a few snow-capped mountains. There’s been an early snowfall or two, but there wasn’t massive amounts quite yet- but still a cool (I mean cold, really cold) shot. We climbed to 14,000ft but found the winds at the upper elevations were kicking at almost 60mph so we couldn’t safely do a lot of maneuvering. Temperature dropped to 27 degrees, and remember, there’s no door on my side. The Hasselblad, MacBook and Canon all worked great despite the extreme conditions… and I’m beginning to get feeling back into my fingertips!

Tonight, we’re in Sedona, Arizona.

(click the video screenshot to play.)
Here’s a quick video taken with the MacBook laptop built-in camera.
Shooting over Death Valley at about 5,000ft. Cold.

Lake Powell is absolutely beautiful and today was a super clear day. I’ve been shooting overall editorial scenics and way cool artistic images where I try to look straight down at Mother Earth’s patterns of nature.

So we’re minding our business over the lake at about 2,100 ft (low in aviation terms- commercial jets fly at 37,000 ft.) when I catch just a gray blur out of the corner of my eye. I had been shooting out my door on the right side. The pilot had just uttered a few choice expressions- that gray blur was a military jet that just missed us on the right side by 100 feet at 600mph…

Here’s a snapshot from this morning in Lone Pine, and the laptop set-up. Being able to see the images full screen as soon as they are shot is perfect. I can check the histograms for exposure and keep on shooting!

We piled on the layers today. I had on long underwear (black), jeans and ski pants… plus sweatshirts and a heavy down jacket. At times today, we were as high as 9,200 ft to navigate across the mountains.

I’m sorry sir, we don’t have an airport…

Tonight, we’re in Kayenta, a small (very small) town outside of Monument Valley. You gotta wonder when you make the hotel reservation and we mention that we’ll be arriving at the “airport” and the clerk says… “I’m sorry sir, we don’t have an airport. Well… we do have a landing strip…” They offered a ride since the airport was 1 1/2 miles away. Did I mention that Kayenta doesn’t have cellular service… we’re talking small town. The scene of us trekking down the highway with our luggage was right out of a really bad reality show!

The Owens Valley is spectacular. At sunset, the Sierra Nevada mountains to the west cut-off the last bit of sunlight to the valley while lighting up the ridge to the east. Today, the lake was a perfect mirror surface. We navigated the helicopter about 50-100 feet above the lake in search of the perfect “mirror” image.

Here’s a cool angle on the Hollywood sign! The LA smog cleared enough for us to get a few cool shots at the top of the Hollywood Hills.

Started a 5 day aerial shoot on the West Coast today. The pilot and I flew into San Diego from Maui arriving around 11pm Friday night. The Hughes 500D helicopter we’re using is based in San Diego.

We arrived at the hanger early this morning to get the aircraft configured. Since I’m shooting with the Hasselblad H2D-39, I wanted to be tethered straight to the laptop. Fortunately, we were able to modify the laptop mount I use in the truck to fit into the helicopter cockpit. (I’ll post a shot of the configuration in the next day or so.) The next step was to configure power. The helicopter native voltage is 24v which we ran through a 24-12v converter in order to run a 12v-110v inverter to power the laptop. (Yes, my head hurts too from thinking about all that electrical stuff!) To stabilize the camera, I’m using a gyro-stabilizer that also requires 12v power to an inverter. Basically, we have a bunch of wires running everywhere!

The snapshot above is from a fuel stop at the Fullerton airport in Southern California. The aircraft has an auxiliary fuel tank so we can go a good 3 hours on a fuel load. also helpful when you’re crossing the mountains or desert without an airport for miles!