Air Ambulance Helicoptor Landing - Please Critique

[swiftmed]

Hey people,

I have been wanting to get a shot of our local Air Ambulance landing at the hospital for quite sometime now, was going to sit beside the helipad for a day and hope it would come in to land, but I was lucky enough to be driving past a few weeks ago when it was inbound. This is one of the better shots I managed to take.

This shot was taken around a week after buying my DSLR - so I still had no clue how to work my camera, although I did choose Shutter Priority mode because of the speed of the Rotablades.

Here is the shot:



Only a little bit of post-processing. Here is the Exif:

Shutter: 1/250
Aperture: f/11.0
Iso: 100
Focal: 37mm

[autofocus]

Andrew, what exactly would you like critiqued about the image? It's an OK shot, but for me, it really doesn't say too much. I think a shot like this would be far more powerful if it were coming in or leaving an accident scene..or hovering over the scene. Of course, timing for a shot like that, and being in the right place at the right time is everything. But, you did manage to capture a shot that seems to be focused and exposed OK.

[RichardTaylor]

Technical:
It appears the left hand side, as viewed, of the helicopter is a bit under exposed. Shooting it from a different viewpoint would have helped. You may be able to lighten it up a bit when PPing

Aesthetically:
The composition is bit centred. I feel it would look a bit better with some space to the right, as viewed and on the bottom. So the helicopter appears to be flying into the picture. (With moving subjects you can't control try shooting with a bit of space around your subject to allow for a bit of leeway for composition when cropping)
The blurred rotor blades are great.

[BexJarratt]

Looks sharp enough on the focus and the exposure looks pretty good to me.

Personally, I would like to see more of the trees, probably as far as ground level but probably not much more to give a more descriptive image. But I'd still want to take it from a low angle so that the helicopter is against the sky. If it was hovering quite still or I was any good at panning I would probably want to slow down the shutter speed to one full rotation of the blades to get a blurred effect to just the blades giving a sense of action to the shot.

[IABoomer]

I'll second some of what Vince said. It's pretty well exposed, although I might like to see a bit more detail on the body of the chopper. The slight blur of the blades is interesting.

As far as composition goes, it's smack dab in the middle. There's no place for it to go. If you get a chance to shoot something like this again, try to leave some room for the object to move into, both horizontally and vertically. That negative space will make the image more interesting and if you can get the landing pad in the shot it will tell a bit more of a story and imply some motion.

[candleman]

looks under exposed.. I'd boost the mid-tones with a level adjustment to fill the chopper in a bit.

nice job slowing the shutter down.. i'm still a bit surprised the blades blurred that much at 1/250th

i like the wide angle/looming feel to it.. so respectfully disagree with the "no space to go" comment.
that shot makes me feel like it's about to land on me or something.. which is cool

I love that fact that you were lucky enough to thet the blade pointing into the corner of the frame.. that makes this image just a little more dynamic.

nice try.. keep it up

[dakwegmo]

It looks like you've exposed for the sky, which leaves the side of the helicopter slightly under-exposed. That's easily fixable in post processing.

From a compositional standpoint, the trees don't do anything for me. I can tell that the helicopter is close to the ground, but they really don't add anything to the shot and are a bit of a distraction. Ideally, you'd want to either get the helicopter when it's lower to the ground, giving a some context to whether it was taking off/landing at a hospital or an accident scene. As it is, I'd just clone or crop them out so that you have clean sky as a background. A well placed crop may also help move the subject out of dead center and give the appearance of movement.

[swiftmed]

Wow, thanks for everybody's replys. They are great, and very greatfully received.

Vince - What would I like critiqued - well I am pretty happy with the image, but I value your opinions, and whatever you feel could be improved, Im happy to hear about.

Richard - Thank you for your feedback, as for composition being in the centre, the camera and photography as a whole were brand new to me when I took these pictures, so things like the rule of thirds meant nothing to me, as this hospital is quite close, id be interested in going back and having a second try at a chopper landing putting into practice the advice you've given.

Bex - thanks also for your feedback. I do have a shot which incorporates more of the ground and the background, I didn't personally feel it was the better of the two images, so didn't post it for critique, but here it is - again, id value your opinion on that...



Note: As you can tell, Ive done quite a lot of post-processing on this image, so its far from the original. Not sure it actually adds to the overall picture - i was just experimenting tbh.

Candleman - thanks for the compliment. As for 'nice job on slowing the shutter down', that was by pure luck. I had no idea what I was doing, so basically took a bunch of pictures changing the shutter speed slightly for each one, hoping to get one or two keepers.

Marcus - Exposing for the sky was all down to the camera, the only thing I was directly controlling on this picture was the shutter speed, and even then, i didn't know what I was 'really' doing, it was pure luck. I will definitely have a go trying to remove the trees and exposing the chopper a bit more in PP.

Thanks again everybody.

[autofocus]

Andrew, try a tighter crop of the second image to eliminate the smoke stack and leave as much of the ground and buildings in the frame...it looks like the chopper is just starting it's climb taking off. Plus, it gets the chopper out of dead center. I just played with it for the fun of it, and cropped it that way to a 4x6

[JFSanders]

The second photograph is much more dynamic and gives context to the subject which is great. Too bad about the leaning tower of smokestack. Jim