Cheryl and I went for a drive on Sunday just to get away from the house and the computers for a while. We headed towards the local lake for the possibility of getting some good photos and as we were driving across the dam I spotted a dark green "thing" sitting in a small field about a mile away. If the rotors hadn't been turning I probably never would have seen it.
Naturally I was curious so I started looking for roads that would get us closer. As we came up on the field, about 300 yards from the car, we watched as the Blackhawk would lift off and hover about ten feet off the ground and then set back down again.
We watched this for about 30 minutes and I never really could figure out what they were doing. They would hover for a while and then set down, then they would hover and fly a little and then set back down in the same spot as before. I could see one of the crew members looking down at the ground as if he was watching the wheels or the wash from the rotors but I never did see anything wrong.
After about 45 minutes we saw the Blackhawk fly off to the east and disappear. It made for some interesting shots.
These were all hand held with the Sigma 150-500mm, most shot at 500mm. I did a little tweaking of the sky in Nikon's NX2 to take some of the brightness out and then framed them up in Adobe Photoshop CS4.
What a great find! I'll bet you're glad you had your Sigma 150-500 with you that day... Sure pulls those far away subjects in close.
ReplyDeleteWell, nice to see our Roving Reporter back in action taking Shots on The Fly! Covering the Plains and Grasslands of Kansas is a big job! Especially down the Back Roads.
ReplyDeleteGlad that Pilot knew the difference between the barrel of a 500mm camera and a weapons barrel or we might not be seeing these nice hand held Shots of Opportunity.
Nice frames and a little color tweak for the skies seems just right for this series.
When made larger the rotation was almost froze on the rotor blades. Nice touch.
It looks like you are on a spy mission! I think the pilot landed this bird for them to take care their physical needs.
ReplyDelete