This weekend I was awarded the lovely opportunity to teach aircrew members how to survive in a combat environment. What does that mean? Four days of trudging through thick brush and pulling ticks out of places you never thought a bug would go. All negativity aside, I really enjoy getting out of the office and playing in the woods, especially when they let me take my camera!
After leaving Moffett in California, I never thought I would see another Helicopter with the Air Force, but the Army came out to help us with the training and performed some water rescues. In California I worked with the Rescue guys for 5 years and never actually saw a water rescue. It was pretty cool watching them perform their rescues with their Blackhawk. I have had many opportunities to photograph helicopters, but I can tell you, it never gets old! I must have shot over 200 single shots and 40 for HDR’s in a matter of 20 minutes.
After featuring Mark last week I thought I would try a single image HDR with the Helicopter taking off. While I usually don’t do Pseudo HDR’s there was really no way around it. I would normally use the selective de-ghosting feature in Photomatix to fix up the movement (like you see in the second helicopter pic) but that was out of the question when everything in the picture is moving. I was surprised to see that there is enough dynamic range in one raw to make a really good HDR actually.
For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!
