Perhaps if you'd kept the spoilers closed, the photo aircraft would have had a better chance.
One day at Halton I was doing AEG in a Mk3 flying from the front seat (hadn't yet been checked out for back seat) and I found I could easily spot land by turning final a bit high then opening the spoilers and doing an almost vertical descent, closing the spoliers about 5 feet up and using ground effect to float back to the launch point; cadet out, another one in, cable on and away again.