Helicopter
Image #0160
(enlarged): Chopper showing crew of two, antenna protruding from
upper front (above windscreen and along
side behind small window on rear compartment.) Notice, lack of
markings. Color is close to actual color, but highlighted for
better viewing. The color was actually more blackish
green.
Helicopter
Thursday, July 19, 2007.
Location: Southwestern Louisiana, Rural Area
Earlier that morning, I had taken off to try and shoot a series of images a few miles down the road near a bayou that had an interesting train trestle. I had been to this location a couple of times before attempting to catch a train passing over the trestle. Again, this day the shot eluded me and after waiting for about an hour in the almost 100% humidity, sweat pouring off me and the mosquitos having a field day with my ankles, I gave up disappointed, and headed back home.
Shortly after arriving home, the UPS delivery man dropped off a small package. It was a new B+H circular polarizer filter for my 70-300mm Nikkor lens. I was excited and wanted to try out the filter immediately.
I noticed a filmy appearance to the filter, but gave it no real thought, for I had researched the filter before buying and knew that the filter was supposed to look unclear off the lens as well as on the lens. However, this appearance was supposedly not supposed to affect the images. I found out later, that assumption was incorrect.
Outside I focused on some medium range objects and shot a few images. I noticed through the view finder that the image I was viewing appeared as if I was viewing my shot through a "misted up" lens -- the same time of viewing you see when you go out from an air conditioned car into a hot and humid location and the lens begins to fog up.
I was a bit taken aback, but figured the images would be OK. On the LCD monitor, they did appear to be somewhat foggy in nature. What gives?
At about this time, off to the northwest, behind the treeline near the highway, I could hear what appeared to be a helicopter.
I hoped that the helicopter would appear above the tree line so I could test the lens.
A few moments later, it appeared below the tree line about a half mile away and I could make it out between the pine branches.
Momentairly, it turned and headed in my direction, flying above the tree line (from my vantage point a few feet west of my carport) and seemed to be about 300 or so feet above the ground.
The helicopter surprised me. I expected to see a civilian chopper painted white with colored trim, working the area probably for the many pipelines criss-crossing the area.
Instead, I saw a military-type chopper, painted a blackish green dull drab color. In front of the gray, overcast sky, it appeared almost black in color.
It headed straight for me.
As it slowly neared the tree line (some 75 yards to my west) it slowed to a hoover, pointing in my direction.
Momentairly, it again began moving forward, slowly and proceeded to come closer to a point about 50 yards away and still at the same altitude.
I had trained my camera on the chopper as it appeared at the tree line and was shooting shots quickly.
I watched the chopper continued to slowly move in my direction and then again appear to hover for a little bit, before again moving on, making a very gentle right turn to the south. It maintained altitude and proceeded at a very slow pace and began a long circling arch back towards the tree line. It appeared to lose some altitude, but only a little.
Again, it approached my position. I could see two men in the cockpit. The doors were off the chopper and the occupant nearest me (port side) was in white shirt and jeans and had on a military issue flying helmet. The glare of the windscreen pretty much prevented my from seeing the second occupant on the other side (starboard).
At one point on the second approach, the chopper appeared to move a bit more north and I could see the occupant on the starboard side. He was in military flight coveralls, and with a regulation military helmet. On his sleeve could be clearly seen a flag patch (not the usual black drab color, but red, white and blue).
He, like the fellow on the other opposite side of the chopper stared down at me and my camera pointed in their direction.
They hovered again and we looked at each other.
I half expected the chopper to land in the field adjacent to my property, but it did not.
After a few moments (30 seconds? a minute?) of hovering, it again slowly began a gradual turn to the south and then began following the nearby road towards town some 7 miles to the east.
It is interesting to note, as you will see in the following 40 images or so, that the chopper was definitely a military one, black-green in color, and appeared to have an enclosed rear compartment with small viewing windows. It also had a pair of antenna on the front above the cockpit, and along the sides to the upper rear of the fuselage.
As hard as I could look and then viewing the images later, there appeared to be no markings of any kind on the chopper. NONE!
Others have told me of this chopper appearing about midday over the local college and hovering there on more than one occasion. I am assuming that this is the same chopper.
Here he was, about 7 miles from town, over open country, going eyeball to eyeball with me and my camera.
Interesting...
Below are the series of images I took that day.
The original images were taken with the camera (Nikon D40x) set on AUTO (normally I shoot in the "Aperture" mode) and the settings were 1/500 sec, f/8 and ISO 200, using a 70-300mm Nikkor telephoto lens set at approximately 270mm (35mm eq:405mm). The images were shot using the RAW format setting. The settings above are an average and probably changed somewhat as the angle of shooting changed.
The images were taken between 10:57 and 11:06am.
On the downside: The new polarizer filter was a problem with the images, giving me a fuzzy image, combined with the solid cloud cover behind the chopper.
The images as view full size later, were a bit disappointing.
I later cleaned the "film" from the filter and the images taken since are beautiful and clear. The polarizing filter works great.
Later, I uploaded the RAW images BACK into the camera and tried adjusting the quality "in-camera". I utilized the "skylite filter" and the images improved somewhat.
Taking those same images (now in .jpg format), I resized them, adjusted the contrast, the shadows (in some cases using the "dodge tool" in Photoshop Elements) and also used the "Unsharp Mask Tool" and a filter called "Neat Image" to remove some of the noise.
The images were brought into Photoshop Elements and cropped to show as much of the chopper as I could and then the modifications done. The size chosen was 8 inches wide (or high) depending on the original dimensions of the image and reduced in dpi to 72dpi for web presentation.
Other than the alterations mentioned, the images were not doctored in any other manner or altered for content. They are as taken.
Things done wrong: I was not aware that shooting helicopters usually were best done using a shutter speed of 1/100 sec to blur the rotors. Also, not having enough time to check the filter and clean it first before installing it on my camera. I had a cheaper polarizer that I did not want to put on the camera, for the images were coming out less that hoped for, thus prompting my ordering the better quality filter.
I had originally placed two of the images on a web site that I place some of my photographs -- with less that pleasing results. They were scoffed at. When I got the idea of taking the images and creating an animated GIF presentation of the entire shoot to draw some attention to the shoot, this was received with even less enthusiasm.
After a blistering rebuttal from a couple of the "old hands" there, I pulled the images.
Thus I began this project and decided to try a different approach to presenting the images for viewing.
The resulting images from this series are displayed below.
Enjoy!
Image #0142
Image #0143
Image #0144
Image #0145
Image #0146
Image #0147
Image #0148
Image #0149
Image #0150
Image #0151
Image #0152
Image #0153
Image #0154
Image #0155
Image #0156
Image #0157
Image #0158
Image #0159
Image #0160
Image #0161
Image #0162
Image #0163
Image #0164
Image #0165
Image #0166
Image #0167
Image #0168
Image #0169
Image #0170
Image #0171
Image #0172
Image #0173
Added to website on 22 July 2007.
Veterans
Survey Form
September 5,
2002.
Would YOU be interested in adding YOUR story
--
or a loved-one's story? We have made it
very
easy for you to do so.
By clicking on the link below, you will be
sent
to our "Veterans Survey Form" page where a survey
form
has been set up to conviently record your
story.
It is fast -- convenient and easy to fill out
--
Just fill in the blanks!
We would love to tell your story on
World War II Stories -- In Their Own
Words.
WW
II Stories: Veterans Survey Form
© Copyright 2001-2007
World War II Stories -- In Their Own
Words
All Rights Reserved
Please Sign Our Guestbook...
Updated on 22 July 2007...0940:05 CST
View the World War II Stories
Guestbook
Sign the World II Stories
Guestbook
 |