One Old Bird to Another......

Yesterday afternoon I went to Robins Air Force Base to photograph an MH-53M Pave Low helicopter that was being delivered to the Museum of Aviation for display. This aircraft began its flying career the same year I started working at the Telegraph. H'mmm, does that mean I am museum ready, too? Our photo opportunity was out on the flight line where two helicopters sat. One was to be donated to the museum, the other was to carry the flight crew back to Florida.



The donated chopper was to take some base employees on a short flight. I started photographing as the crew prepared for the flight. Pretty bland stuff, when you photograph a helicopter at a normal daylight shutter speed, you stop the rotor blades. I wanted to have some movement in the blades, so I dropped my ISO to 200, which is as low as my camera will go. That allowed me to shoot at 1/80 second and have some motion in the blades. Any slower and I would have washed out the image through overexposure.





I got the shot of the crewman taking the fire extinguisher out on the ramp, and then tried some tight shots of the blades. Made a kinda cool image.

When they took off I was afraid to shoot so slow, and kicked the shutter speed back up. I had noticed the C-5's out on the ramp, and was hoping the helicopter would fly low enough over them to shoot it between their tails. Worked out okay.

Too bad I didn't get a ride.