Can You Land that Helicopter Again?

The day dawned with a crystal blue autumn sky, so clear it hurt your eyes. We couldn’t have ordered a better backdrop for shooting an emergency helicopter landing at Saint Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie, NY. Nadine and I had been hired to take documentary-style photographs with special emphasis on their acclaimed trauma services. Our contact, Karen, was very excited about the work we’d already delivered.

After years of deliberating, I’d bought a high-end digital camera (Nikon D2H) a few months earlier. This was its first commercial outing, October 2005. We’d done a bunch of semi-staged setups over the course of the week prior. At night, we’d save out a bunch of low-res jpg files for Karen to review and forward to her team. It was a much easier and infinitely more artistic process than looking at contact sheets through a loop.

We’d done our homework and knew exactly where we wanted to be when the helicopter was due to arrive. Saint Francis overlooks the Hudson River valley and from the topmost building there was a stunning wide-angle view of the hospital grounds in the foreground, the valley in the background and the welcoming statue of Saint Francis not far from the helipad. I think the building had six floors plus the extra stairs to the roof. Of course, the morning of the shoot, the elevator wasn’t working. No problem. We were early. We energetically mounted the stairs to stake out our position. No sooner had we set up the tripod, Karen got a call that one of the doctors we’d been unsuccessful in photographing earlier was available, but only briefly. We had time to shoot the doctor and still make it back for the helicopter. So, we packed up, went down the seven floors to emergency, set up the lights and photographed the doctor in action.

Minutes to spare, we ran back up to the roof. At that point, we’d set this up several times, so our fingers flew, the camera was mounted on the tripod in no time. The pilot had radioed in. I tried to slow my heart back to normal after running up the stairs and patiently waited for the helicopter to appear in the viewfinder. One of the reasons I’d chosen this camera was its fantastic burst rate. It shoots something like eight frames per second. I set the camera to continuous shoot mode and as soon as the speck of the helicopter was in the frame I simply held down the shutter button. Delightfully, the camera fired off frames at a dizzying pace. But then, just as the helicopter was getting close, the camera quit shooting. I’d maxed it out and it needed to save what it had shot before letting me continue. I was frantic. The pilot was coming in slow to make sure I got my shot, turning different angles for me. Ugh.

Pilots are always so cool. He didn’t flinch when I asked him if he would land again. In fact, I think he’d been asked the question before, because his ready answer was that helicopters look the same taking off as they do landing. While we were talking, they got an emergency call and had to leave asap, so we ran back up the bloody stairs to get them on their way out. This time, I was more selective with the shutter.

Later that same afternoon, a real trauma case was coming in by helicopter. Karen got approval for us to shoot their arrival. We stood with our backs to the helicopter till the whoosh of the blades died down. The shots I took of the team unloading the patient and rushing him into the ER are so much toothier than the staged shots. You can feel the urgency.

Sunset was near as we ran up the stairs one last time to shoot the helicopter’s departure. A pink light escorted them out of view. Our thighs burned for days afterward.