One of our images is featured in an article about crew crash helmets in this month’s issue of Vertical Magazine.The image is of rescue paramedic Mike Heyniger as the Bell 407 banks hard over Sonoma County airport. I think what makes this shot exta special is that it also captures the shadow of the aircraft on the runway. The tricky thing about this kind of shot is the inside of the helicopter is relatively dark compared to the scene through the window. If you expose for your subject matter inside the cockpit, you’ll usually severely overexpose whatever can be seen through the window and end up with nothing but white in the window frame. If you expose for the light coming through the window, you’ll usually underexpose the subject matter in the cockpit and end up with a black blob where you should have seen a person, and no amount of photoshopping will save what could have been a nice image.
The solution is to use a flash to add light to the interior or know the exposure for the happy medium. When shooting inside helicopters, I tend not to use flash, especially when shooting into someone’s eyes. The last thing the crew needs is to be distracted, or worse, temporary blinded by a flash. In this case, I used the available light and exposed for the happy medium. Click on the link to see the image in the article. The link will open a PDF in a new window.
