The sun has just set and I’m staring at the lights of Canary Wharf through the viewfinder of my D3, The Thames leading the way towards the bright lights of the city…what’s so special about that? Well on any other day, not much…but on this occasion I’m 1000ft in the air leaning out the side of a Twin Squirrel helicopter!

How did it all come about?
Let’s go back a little bit to fill you in on how this all came about. Months ago, work wanted me to take some photo’s of London for use as backdrops for set dressing etc when guests were being interviewed at our Millbank Studio. At the time I took a series of images of The Houses of Parliament, The London Eye and some of the other standard shots you typically see. Not very inspiring but it was all that was wanted at the time. Once they were taken it was decided to get some more elevated shots, maybe from the roof of some of the buildings around the city…however after several phone calls it was discovered most buildings want a lot of money for the privilege of taking photos from them when being used commercially or for broadcast. It was at that point my friend decided to find out if we could use the helicopter our work has access to in order to get some decent high up shots. We got the go ahead and so were granted the use of a helicopter fitted with a HD camera on the underside, so that we could do some filming as well as take stills. Fast forward several months and finally we got a day were the weather, shift patterns and work and all the other variables came together and it was time to take to the skies…our time in the helicopter would take in many sites inlcuding, The London Eye, The Millennium Dome, Heathrow and even a quick fly past of Windsor Castle…!

Do you get sea sick…?
We arrived at the airfield in Surrey and went in for a quick briefing on what to expect and for us to explain the shots we wanted. The pilot and camera man operating the on-board HD camera have been in the business a long time and have done shoots for many films and tv shows and their knowledge proved invaluable to us as we were the rookies not really knowing what to expect. We had explained we wanted day time shots and dusk shots to which the guys flying didn’t sound too keen on in one days shoot due to the flight time being restricted to how much fuel we could carry and how long that would last with 4 people plus equipment on board. So, we made tentative plans for doing the dusk shots another day and would concentrate on the day time shots on this flight. I was a little nervous but excited…right up until the point we were asked if either of us get motion sickness/sea sickness…as if we did, we would probably throw up during the flight! Not what I wanted to hear as I do get very sea sick…’not to worry, we have sick bags’ said the pilot as he handed me said item. Thankfully, I didn’t even come close to needing to use them!

Put some of this gaffer tape round your lap belt buckle to be safe…
Now I must admit, when we originally arranged to do this, I checked to make sure I would be able to shoot clearly from the helicopter thinking I could shoot through a window only to be told no, you just slide the door open so you have a complete un-obstruted view of the outside. From the time I found that out there was a little bit of apprehension as I didn’t really know what to expect…on the day of the shoot, as we walked out to the helicopter and were shown how to open and close the doors (and remove them in case of emergency!) I was struck by just how small the cockpit area was and just how close to the edge of it I’d be when the door was open! This shot is from just before we went up for flight number two, really wanted a shot of me taking photos whilst up there but we never got round to it.

I’ll be the first to admit there was a brief moment of thinking ‘erm…yeah…do we REALLY need these photos that much?’ but I climbed in, buckled up (an airplane style lap belt, plus you put gaffer tape round the buckle to make sure you don’t un-clip yourself by mistake in the air) and waited for the engines to warm up so we could be on our way. I have included the shot below, showing the edge of my seat as we made a right turn leaning at a 45 degree angle.

Flight time to London was a mere 10 minutes traveling at 130mph, although due to the height you really don’t feel like your moving fast at all. As we sat on the edge of London’s airspace waiting approval the first thing that struck me was how cool it was to see the city in this way…that however very quickly turned to how poor the lighting was, I mean it was bright yes, but it was very very hazy with no real contrast. This was a concern because after all that time planning we really didn’t want the day to be ruined by poor weather! My worry of the poor light was then replaced by a mixture of excitement and fear as the pilot announced ‘Richard, you can now open your door’…

Covering my bases
Once the door was open I spent the first few seconds adjusting to exactly what was going on…me, taking photo’s of the Thames Barrier, several hundred foot in the air from a helicopter…! It was all very surreal. I had planned ahead though to try and make sure I could make the most of the experience. I had my D3 with the 28-70 and I borrowed a friends D2x with my 70-200 VR so I had the option of some tighter crops if I needed them, although for the most part I used the D3 – in fact I think I only shot about 100 frames in total with the D2x. Ideally I’d have liked to be shooting with a second D3 or a D700 but it was nice to have the backup of the D2x just in case as I thought that would be a  much better option than trying to change lenses mid air, which if nothing else would have slowed me down way too much.

A learning curve & picking out the smaller details
Our total flight time in the afternoon was 2hrs from 14:30 to 16:30 and during that time the light went from very bright/hazy to just bright with things clearing a little after a while. I had suggested an afternoon flight to take advantage of the nice long shadows that I was expecting the low autumn sun to cast and thankfully as it brightened up we got just that. The whole thing was a great learning curve for me as I had no idea what to expect, what settings would work best how to frame shots from the air etc but it was great learning as I went along. One thing I realised pretty quickly was that I needed to underexpose my images by almost a full stop a lot of the time as from the air, London has a LOT of white/reflective roof tops and buildings so I was clipping the highlights if I didn’t drop the exposures down. One thing I will say for London, is that on first impressions, from the air it’s quite a bland looking city if you are taking in the whole thing in one view. However, once you start looking at it in smaller details, just taking bits of it in at as time you can really start to appreciate the finer details that make up the capital and you also start to see things you just would never have known were there otherwise.

Going back to the learning curve of shooting from the air, looking back over my shots I found a lot didn’t have straight horizons or where there was no horizon in the shot buildings looked a bit distorted. I put that down to using a wide angle which distorts the edges a little combined with looking at the ground from sometimes obscure angles as the helicopter would maneuver itself around.

Twice in one day!
Once we landed back down I was buzzing quite a bit as I loved every second of being up in the air and my pre-flight nerves were well and truly gone, in fact they were gone about 30 seconds after opening the helicopter door for the first time above the Thames barrier. We walked back in to the hanger and talk of doing a dusk flight came up again as we were going to plan a day in the future when we could do that…however to our delight the pilot said we would be going back up again in an hour! Perfect, it was a lovely clear evening so we knew the chances of a good dusk was there to help get the shots.

I couldn’t wait to get back in the chopper and head up again and the hour between flights seemed to drag on and on. Finally it was time to get back in the air, although this time I decided to only bring the D3 and leave the D2x behind seeing as low light shooting is NOT one of it’s strong points! I had my 28-70 attached to the D3 but took the 70-200 VR along as well just in case, although I only used it once then swapped back as I soon realised wide shots were the way to go and swapping lenses back and forth in an open doored helicopter is not really ideal! Again I wish I had a second D3 with me as I would have loved to get some closer shots of some sights and the VR would have helped combat the vibration to an extent.

The city comes alive at night
Our flight time at dusk was quite short as the helicopter had to be on the ground 30 minutes after official sunset, and we were 10 minutes from base. So, in all just 20 minutes of flight time around the city once the sun was gone which just wasn’t long enough…especially as we were flying for the filming and not the stills as we didn’t have much time, so all my shots were taken on the move but I thoroughly enjoyed it regardless and still managed to get a few I was pleased with. I’d have loved to go over more of the city at night but we mainly concentrated on the financial district. however, once the ambient light had all but gone…WOW…London just came alive! The colours from all the different buildings just look stunning with the orange glow of streets working their way through them and leading you off in all directions. I think the worst part of the whole day was flying away from London just as this incredible sight really started to unfold – it really is an amazing thing to see from the air and an experience I am very grateful to have had! Although…If I had had my way we would have been up there until I had filled up all my memory cards.

I can honestly say my experience shooting from a helicopter was easily the best moment of my photography so far. Nothing else I’ve done has given me even close to the buzz I got from leaning out the side of the helicopter as we flew straight over the top of the Gherkin or flew round Canary Wharf at night with views back down the river to the heart of the city…simply incredible! It was also good to be pushed in terms of learning a new way to shoot as taking photos from the air was not as straight forward as shooting from the ground…and learning how to expose, compose and counter the vibrations and pitching etc from the chopper was both fun and challenging and something I would certainly like to do again as I think I could improve a lot on my first shots which I basically went in to blindly. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at Aerial Photography and I couldn’t think if a better place to do my first shoot than over London, the city I grew up in. I can already see ways to improve looking back at some of my shots and I think if I ever get the chance to do it again I’ll think about renting out a Gyro to add further stability to the evening shots as some of them were a little soft. Overall though the day was one I’ll certainly not forget in a hurry…fingers firmly crossed I get that second opportunity again one day…

Extra Images
I took a LOT of shots, far too many to put on the blog and a lot of photo’s of the same thing from different angles. I’ve only put up a very small selection and tried not to put up the same places from different angles as that would get pretty boring. So I hope you enjoyed the small selection above, below are a couple more to go along with them.