Jon Davison came over from Australia back in September. He is doing a book on Robinson helicopter operators worldwide and was kind enough to take some air-to-air photos of N404WT, our first R44, flying over various sights in the Boston area. Enjoy the slide show.
[Tech details for my photo.net readers: Jon was using his Nikon D200 and Sigma 28-200, $240, the kind of superzoom that I have always told photo.net readers not to buy. http://photo.net/learn/aerial/primer shows some images taken with standard Canon lenses (taken by me when I wasn’t busy flying the helicopter in formation).]
Thank you Philip, I enjoyed your slide show enormously! WHAT a photogenic saffron helicopter you have! especially seen against so many ocean blues and fascinating old and new scenes of Boston and environs below. If I am unaware that this caliber of urban aviation photography existed, then it is a photo opportunity that hasn’t yet made it into the visual mainstream. Voila! You are the perfect person to have intuited and introduced it so well and you are the perfect person to take it further.
Boston and north up the coast is such a classic and nuanced visual venue, and your photographs via Jon Davison are so excellent, that your slide show resurrected the memory of my first helicopter imprinting. Do you know the opening scene in Federico Fellini’s film La Dolce Vida, wherein the soundtrack is solely the helicopter engine as it flies over the historic architecture of Rome, where voluptuous beauties are sunning on penthouse rooftops, and while transporting, suspended by cable, a larger-than-life statue of Jesus Christ? With this imprinting I noticed the power of cultural juxtaposition and foreshortening, because for years thereafter the scene flashed to mind every time I heard a chopper, and I lived within range of the Pendleton air base in California.
You have posted a little about your flight business considerations. So yes, this kind of eye-opening and mind-opening slide show could be the clincher on my booking some flying/viewing time with you and gifting and referring your flight service to others, including some of my old friends in Boston. More on intuitive marketing if you wish. I think large onscreen & backlit images are much more effective than print in this case, although there’s always a place for print.
Here’s my alternative viewpoint: your slide show inspired this much interest and enthusiasm from someone who has crossed the Atlantic twice in winter by ship to avoid flying. I have since found that I can serenely opt to fly in a small aircraft when the pilot is someone personally known to me to be truly intelligent, spiritually and mentally balanced, healthy and physically fit, a happy person with many-compelling-interests-to-live-for-just-like-me, and I know that he competently sees to the maintenance of his own aircraft. That covers a lot of personal history and yes, knowing did empower me to ride through an extended series of 1,500’ up-and-down elevators with silent aplomb and adventurous amazement as we crossed the Owyhee mountains enroute to the California coast.
In the past, “happy person” has also meant happily married and a proud father.
I would make a present exception on those factors in your case, Philip, because I have read, enjoyed and benefited from probably every word you have ever posted on the Internet since about 1993.