Flying Right . . .
By
John Terence Turner
Stock Asylum Columnist
Nov 1, 2006
©
2006 John Terence Turner
The selection of models is key to the success of a shoot like this one
of helicopter skiing in British Columbia. If the skiers had not been
strong and expert, this shot would not have succeeded.
To make this work, the models skated hard to get up speed on top of the cornice, made a right-hand turn and then jumped off the cornice — all while staying side-by-side.
To make matters worse, the landing was steep. Had they landed on the tails of their skis, they would have gone out of control and probably out of the picture. That part was important because I continued to shoot them all the way down to my location.
 As usual, Turner was looking for something a little different here. Most helicopter skiing images show the helicopter in the distance and the skiers cutting through powder. Turner had the aircraft stick around and caught the skiers jumping. ( © John Terence Turner ). |
Here’s what happens when the models are not up to the demands of the shoot: during a shoot on Mount Hood for a ski-clothing manufacturer, we took a snow-cat far outside the ski area boundaries to a very steep slope with a dramatic rock tower on top.
We told the female skiers to precede the male skiers down the face for about 50 yards and then side-step back up to do it again.
The smooth, snow-clad face continued steeply well beyond the section we were using at the top.
It was a beautiful, if intimidating, view, so steep and long that you had the feeling that, if you fell, you would reach the next county before stopping. We shot several runs with two pairs of skiers. The skiers were small in the picture and the scenery was big and breath-taking.
When I got the film on the light table back in Seattle, I found that the faces of the female skiers, who had been hired by the manufacturer mostly because they were cute, expressed pure terror.
They looked as if they faced certain death. It was to their credit that they got up there and tried anyway.
Fortunately, we finally found one useable image in which the skier’s face might have been showing excitement instead of heart-stopping fear. That one good shot became a poster for the client.
Now, back to this column’s image:
Many helicopter skiing pictures I’ve seen (and I’ve made some of them) show skiers happily carving up powder snow with the helicopter far off in the background. They are good, evocative pictures but I always wanted the helicopter closer and the skiers doing something other than carving pretty powder turns.
So, with those goals firmly in mind, I hired two strong Seattle skiers with whom I had previously worked and we set off for Whistler-Blackcomb in British Columbia.
The marketing director for Blackcomb was friend of one of my skiers — and a solid skier himself –– so I hired him to join us for the shoot. It was a good hire, because once I started asking him about renting a helicopter he said, “They’re friends of mine, let me call them.”
They were friends indeed, because they met us at the bottom of the slope surmounted by the cornice I planned to use and they hauled my skiers up, got into the proper position in the shot and did all this a half dozen times for about an hour and only charged me $150.00. They even signed a property release.
I like this picture because the couple is airborne, going off a high cornice in good form, while the helicopter hovers above.
The sky is an even blue, not cluttered with mountains or trees or even clouds, making it a very clean picture.
The shadows of the skiers and the helicopter are nice bonuses. In the really fine details you can see the texture of the snow in the foreground and, in larger blow-ups, you can even see the little, sparkly reflections of the sun off the snow!
I shot with a Nikon F5 and a 300mm f2.8 lens, hand-held (sort of). Because it was a snow scene and a bright, sunny day, shutter speeds were pretty high, letting me easily stop the action.
Nonetheless, a fast 300 mm lens is a bit heavy, so I arranged my ski poles in an upside-down “V” and rested my lens on top of the handles. That meant I didn’t have to support the weight of the camera and lens while framing, focusing and shooting. On location you often must use whatever equipment is available.
Knowing I had this shot nailed, made the 5-hour drive home to Seattle go quickly because I had the pleasure of anticipating the moment I would get to look at these images. The photograph was used as a full-page ad by JEEP and has sold reasonably well since.
(John Terence Turner has been shooting stock photography for 20 years. His work can be seen at Getty Images, Alamy and, of course, The Stock Asylum, where his column appears twice a month. He lives and works in Seattle, WA.)
Turner's web site can be found at: http://www.johnterenceturner.com.
For more of his images: click here.
For all of Turner's columns: click here.
