Tag Archives: photography

Air-to-Air

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The best photos of an aircraft usually show it flying.

Sunday morning, I flew in formation with another aircraft for the purpose of air-to-air photography for the fourth time.

I’ll never forget my first time.

The first time I did this was back in 2002. Flying M Air had a 1999 Robinson R22 Beta II helicopter and I wanted some air-to-air photos for advertising material. A friend of mine had access to a Piper Cub and we made arrangements to do the flight early one morning on the east side of Vulture Peak here in Wickenburg.

The friend — who, unfortunately, is no longer a friend — is an accomplished airplane pilot. He can pretty much fly anything with wings bolted on, from sailplanes to Piper Cubs to Boeing 747s. He had a lot of formation flying experience and he insisted on a briefing. The briefing was, well, brief. It consisted of the following information, which was drilled into my head by repetition:

The lead plane leads. The wing plane watches the lead.

In other words, in every formation flight, there’s a lead plane. That’s the one that sets the flight path. The other planes are wing planes. Their job is to watch the lead plane and maintain the formation. In fact, the wing plane should look at only one thing: the lead plane. The lead is responsible for keeping an eye out for traffic, making radio calls, and doing everything else. The wing follows the lead.

“What does the wing do?” he asked me?

“Follow the lead,” I replied dutifully.

This was pretty simple stuff, but I could tell that it was very important to him. And although I felt that he was treating me like a child with all the drilling, I had a feeling that he’d flown with other people who hadn’t understood the simple instructions. He wanted to make sure I understood. I did.

imageWe flew out of Wickenburg Airport early one morning just after sunrise, when the air was still and cool. Mike flew as a passenger in the Cub with my old digital camera. We flew several passes on the east side of Vulture Peak. Sometimes the Cub lead, sometimes I lead. The best photo of the bunch, which you see here, was with me flying wing at the Cub’s 4 o’clock position.

Next, Two Helicopters

A few years later, I made arrangements with my friend Tristan to lease his 2000 R44 Raven I helicopter for a winter season. When Tristan delivered it, I figured I’d take the opportunity to get a few air-to-air shots. We did a little briefing at the airport and took off. Mike took the camera and sat beside me in my R22.

N45PGThe flight wasn’t as structured as the first flight, but it turned out okay. We got some good photos of Tristan around Vulture Peak. I trusted Tristan not to do anything crazy, but there was a certain level of stress as we flew around. I felt a constant need to see where he was because I wasn’t convinced that he understood the whole wing follows lead thing.

Then, A Real Scare

When I got my 2005 Robinson Raven II, I needed new photos. So I asked my friend Jim if he’d fly with me. Jim’s got a Hughes 500c.

I tried to do a briefing. I really did. Jim kept telling me that he understood. I thought he did.

But as we flew, I realized that Jim didn’t give a damn about the wing follows lead thing. He was just going to fly along with me so Mike could take photos.

imagePart of the problem was that Jim sits on the left side in his helicopter and I sit on the right. So when he was flying on my left side, he was mostly in my blind spot and he had difficulty seeing me. And since I thought he’d be watching me, I wasn’t watching him. Until I happened to glance over and see him a little too close for comfort on my left, right after Mike snapped this photo. To say this wigged me out is an understatement.

Sunday

On Sunday morning, I flew in formation with Dave so aviation Jon Davison could get air-to-air photos of my helicopter for his upcoming book about Robinson Helicopters. Dave is a responsible pilot — heck, he sells aviation insurance for a living! He also might just have as many hours flying helicopters as I do, since he flies his helicopter from Wickenburg to Scottsdale and back — a 30-minute flight each way — most days. So I felt pretty confident that he understood the importance of keeping a safe distance from each other and always knowing where the other one is.

A side note here: about a month or two ago, there was a horrific midair collision in Phoenix between two news helicopters. They went down in a fiery crash and all four on board died. Having something like this happen so close to home — especially when it involves people you know — really peaks your awareness for the dangers of flying with other aircraft. I think this was probably on Dave’s mind as well as mine.

Dave's Hughes 500cWe took off from Wickenburg and did a slow orbit around Vulture Peak with me in the lead. Jon sat behind Dave on the left side of the helicopter, dangling his feet out the door. They flew at my 5 o’clock position. At one point, Jon asked me to stop and hover on the east side of Vulture Peak while he and Dave moved slowly around me.

I should mention here that Zero-Mike-Lima performed flawlessly, allowing me to hold out of ground effect hovers at more than 3000 feet MSL. It wasn’t hot and it wasn’t windy and that made things a lot easier for me. But I did have full fuel and a passenger on board, putting me at about 2200 lbs (that’s 300 lbs below max gross weight).

After Vulture Peak, we broke off and started east across the desert to Lake Pleasant, with me flying in Dave’s 7 o’clock position. We decided to do some work over the Quintero Golf Course, which most people around here don’t even know exists because you can’t see it from the main road. Dave went in first to scout the area with Jon. Then they directed me into position over a pond in the middle of the golf course. It was 8 AM and there were a few golfers down there. I hovered about 300 feet AGL over the pond while Jon and Dave flew around me. We managed to get the shots we needed in only 3 minutes, then continued on to the lake.

At the lake, we flew slowly up the east shore at Dave’s 9 o’clock position. The sun was behind Dave’s helicopter, shining right on us and on the lake and mountains beyond it. We did a few shots near the marina, then broke off and headed off to the stone house.

The stone house, which I mention briefly in “Why I Don’t Share GPS Coordinates Online,” sits on a saddle overlooking Lake Pleasant. It’s a magnificent structure — or at least it would have been if it had been completed and if the vandals hadn’t destroyed much of what was there. It made a good backdrop for the photos Jon wanted to take. After hovering around in front of it — and scaring away a small herd of cattle that had been grazing on the hillside — we landed and got out for a visit. The place was in even worse condition than it had been on my last visit more than two years before.

At the Stone House

We climbed back into our helicopters, cranked them up, and took off to a mill site Dave knew of. It turned out to be Anderson Mill on the Santo Domingo wash. We did some more air-to-air work by the remains of the mill, then broke off and flew back to Wickenburg. Over town, Jon got a few more shots of me flying, this time with Wickenburg in the background.

It was a good photo flight.

More Photo Work Done

We spent yesterday on a whirlwind tour of northern Arizona that included Prescott, Jerome, Sycamore Canyon, Howard Mesa, the Little Colorado River Gorge, Roden Crater, the Grand Falls of the Little Colorado River (not so grand yesterday), Winslow and La Posada (I love breakfast there), Meteor Crater, and Sedona. We flew with Jon’s door off so he could get glare-free photos out the helicopter. But he also took some shots of me flying, using a wide angle lens so he could get the helicopter and views beyond in the shot. Great stuff.

Jon’s still finishing up his editing of the photos he took, but I’ve been watching him work and they look great. I hope to share a few of them here shortly. And I’m sure at least one of them will become Flying M Air‘s new postcard.

Stay tuned.

By the way, you can read more about the first three photos in this piece in “Retouched Photos?“

Not Enough Hours in a Day

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Still too busy to blog regularly.

I’ve been neglecting this blog lately, which is something I’m not happy about. You see, I need to blog. I need to keep this journal of my life and share tips and how-tos with strangers all over the world.

So when I neglect it, as I have been for the past week or so, I feel bad about it.

I Take Work When I Need To

But the reason I’ve been neglecting things is because I’ve been so busy doing the kind of work that pays the bills. (No, blogging doesn’t do that.) As any business owner or freelancer can tell you, there isn’t always paying work to do. Sometimes, after a dry spell, you have to take the work that comes along.

And that’s how it is with Flying M Air. Summer in Wickenburg simply sucks. I can’t put it any other way. There are few people around and none of them want to fly — including me. It’s just too damn hot. So with just one gig in all of July and just three or four in all of August, I was personally funding Flying M Air again, paying its bills through the dead summer months.

And Flying M Air doesn’t have small bills to pay.

When September rolled along, I was anxious to do rides at the Mohave County Fair for the third year in a row. And right after that, were two good gigs with photographers over some of Arizona’s most scenic areas. Although the Fair gig was a bust this year, the two gigs that followed it earned me more than 15 hours of revenue time. That’s enough to keep Flying M Air in the black for four to five months. Best of all, I have another very lucrative gig lined up for Lake Powell, Monument Valley, and Shiprock at the end of September and beginning of October.

I Work Two Jobs

All these gigs have been keeping me from my office for days at a time. That means I can’t do the work I need to do for my other job, the one that funded Flying M Air in the first place.

I’ve been working on my 70th book, a revision of my Mac OS X Visual QuickStart Guide for Leopard, since July. It’s a 750-page volume and I decided this year to tear it apart, reorganize it, and rebuild it from the ground up. I’m nearly done, but it’s been a long, hard task from the start.

It’s always hard writing a book about software when all you have is beta. Betas aren’t always stable, so they occasionally crash at the most inopportune times. Betas aren’t always final, so the thing you wrote about two weeks ago might be different today. It’s a constant process of review and revision.

It’s also a process of learning how new features work. Sure, there’s some onscreen help for some of the new features. But it’s spotty and incomplete, designed to teach basics. It’s best used as a starting point for learning more. Only by “playing” with the feature and experimenting with it can you learn the little tricks that give the book value to readers. That’s my job, and it’s both fun and frustrating sometimes.

Tight Scheduling

As I write this, aviation photographer Jon Davison is in my kitchen, cutting up a cantaloupe for his breakfast. Here’s here to photograph and write about Flying M Air and my helicopter for a book he’s writing about Robinson helicopters. We’ll be flying today and tomorrow and probably on Tuesday. Today’s the air-to-air portion of our photo work; we leave in 45 minutes to fly in formation with my buddy Dave, who owns a Hughes 500.

Although this isn’t a paying gig, it’s important. Jon’s coverage of Flying M Air will help me promote the company. The book, when released, will show readers the kind of work I do and places I go. I’m eager to promote my 6-day excursions and this will definitely help.

So I’m squeezing Jon into my schedule. A few days with him followed by a few days of Leopard followed by a few days in the Four Corners area, flying photographers around.

October is another busy month, with gigs on three of the four weekends.

What To Look Forward To Here

When the Leopard book is done, I’ll begin writing short how-to pieces for this blog about it. But don’t expect to see them before Leopard is released. I take non-disclosure agreements very seriously and don’t have any desire to get Apple, Inc. pissed off at me.

And if you like reading about flying, keep checking in. I’m sure I’ll have some things to say about my work with Jon — hopefully, with photos — and the photographers I’m working with at month-end.

Working Hard

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Writing, flying, writing, flying, repeat, repeat, repeat.

I realize that I haven’t been blogging lately. I have a good excuse. I’m unbelievably busy with work.

I have a drop-dead deadline for my Leopard book coming up very quickly now. So whenever I’m at home, I’m in my office with my fat butt planted in the chair in front of my computer, writing about Leopard. The book is coming along very well, but not without some minor problems. Still, if I keep at it, I’ll get it done on time.

Trouble is, I’m not spending much time in my office. After a seriously crappy-to-the-point-of-wasted-time gig in Kingman last weekend, I had to fly up to Page to take some photographers around Lake Powell. For three days in a row.

Confluence of San Juan and Colorado RiversI love Lake Powell. I think it’s one of the most beautiful places on earth. And if you think it looks great from the ground or water, you should see it from the air! But after a 4 hour flight on 4 hours of sleep today, I decided I’d had enough of the Lake. Fortunately, I’m going home tomorrow, after dropping off one of my clients in Phoenix.

I’ve been in the Marriott Courtyard here since Monday night. I’ve had five flights totaling over 10 hours of billable time, with about 3 hours more to come. Great for the Flying M Air bank account, which can always use a good cash inflow — especially after a slow summer in Wickenburg. But not great for the Leopard deadline.

So now I’m sitting here at the desk in my hotel room with two laptops in front of me — my MacBook Pro test mule running the latest Leopard beta and my trusty 12″ PowerBook G4 — revising text and making new screenshots for my Leopard book. I’ll finish Chapter 7 today and, with luck, start Chapter 9. (No, I’m not doing them in order.)

Tomorrow, I’ll check out of here at 7 AM and take my luggage — including my “portable office” — to the airport. By 8 AM, I hope to have my passenger on board for the flight to Phoenix. With cooperative weather (read that, “no headwinds”), I’ll be at my desk again by 1 PM, laying out the chapters I wrote in Page. Friday, I’ll be in my office all day.

Then, on Saturday, I pick up another photographer. He’s from Australia and he’s doing a coffee table book about Robinson helicopters. I’m one of his featured operators. I’ll fly him around for a few days, taking time to work on the Leopard book in early morning hours, before he’s awake. He leaves on Tuesday. Then I have two more days in my office before another helicopter gig at Lake Powell, Monument Valley, and Shiprock.

Anyone who thinks being a freelancer or owning a business is an easy living should walk in my shoes this month. It’s times like these that I think back with a bit of longing for those cubicle days, when I spent more time shooting the bull with co-workers than working long hours to meet deadlines and client needs.

But by mid-October, things should be back to normal. Until then, bear with me. On the priority scale, blogging has slipped behind a few more important tasks.

Butterfly Out My Window

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Finally captured in pixels.

For the past few days, I’ve been watching butterflies come and go in the Mexican Bird of Paradise bushes outside my office window. Today, I decided I needed to capture them with my camera.

ButterflyDigital cameras are incredible things. You can take 3 dozen photos of the same basic scene and at least one of them just has to be good.

This shot was taken with a Nikon DSLR with a 70-210 zoom lens. The tricky part was focusing — the darn butterflies wouldn’t stay still and there’s just enough breeze outside to move the flowers around. But with a quick shutter speed, several of the shots came out pretty good. I think this might be the best.

Photo Info:
Camera: Nikon D80
Shutter Speed: 1/800th
Aperture: f5.6
Focal Length: 210mm
ISO: 200

Wildlife from the Bus

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In Denali National Park.

While in Denali National Park in June 2007, we took one of the shuttle buses 20 or 30 miles into the park. The shuttle bus service is very unusual — at least as far as my experience goes. It’s a glorified school bus, painted an earthy color — oddly, I can’t remember if it was beige or green! — that traveled down the park’s single dirt road, making a few bathroom/view stops along the way. But that’s not all the stopping it did. It also stopped every time we say some wildlife, whether it was a raven’s nest or a bear family. At that point, everyone on the side of the bus where the wildlife could be seen would lower their windows so we could all get shots of the wildlife.

You can read more about our day in Denali here.

I have mixed feelings about the experience. First of all, it was great to see wildlife in such a convenient way. It was especially good for folks with limited mobility — like the many older folks in the park as part of a cruise ship package. The bus made it possible for them to get the “Denali Experience” which they’d otherwise miss.

But I have a problem with limited access tourism. I believe that it has made it acceptable for us to visit natural wonders and see them through the window of a vehicle rather than to get out and experience them close-up.

You want an example? When I flew helicopters at the Grand Canyon, a good percentage of our passengers only saw the Grand Canyon from the window of a helicopter. While that’s certainly an incredible way to see the canyon, it’s certain not the only way — or, dare I say it, the best. A walk along the rim of the park is easy enough and will expose you to wildlife, the sound of the wind in the trees, the smell of the pines, the feel of the heat or cold coming out of the canyon. In other words. you use more senses than just sight. A hike or mule ride into the canyon will bring the canyon around you and make you part of its immensity. A raft trip down the Colorado River will let you experience one of the powers that carved the canyon and is still carving it today.

But this entry isn’t about the Grand Canyon. It’s about Denali and the wildlife I captured with my camera from the bus. You’ll see these photos in the header for this blog.

Raven's NestThe raven’s nest was the first wildlife we saw. The nest was in a tree not far from the road. I was fortunate enough to snap this photo of one of the raven parents returning to the nest with food for its young.

Bear FamilyThe bear family — mom and the two cubs — was a big hit. They were right near the road and we stopped for a while to watch them. Later, on another bus, we stopped to watch them again. Lots of photo ops. Unfortunately, the driver of the second bus was extremely rude and admonished anyone who had the guts to whisper when we were in the area. Too much noise, he said. As if big buses driving up and down the road all day didn’t make too much noise.

CaribouWe saw some caribou along the way. At one stop, there were several of them and a bear in sight. I snapped this photo on the return trip.

I took more photos that appear in the header in Denali. I’ll discuss them in other entries.