Artistic use of a helicopter.
 

Chicago - Stunning aerial photos of Vincent Laforet - Pictures - CBS News

I don't know if any of you know Vincent Laforet, but somebody here may have flown him around as he works magic with his camera.

One of our media organs has set up a small slide show of his photographs taken from the air. One shot shows him at work in a helicopter.

Lovely work, and due to it being in some cases time lapse photography, not quite what we'd see if we were flying over the same spot on the ground as he photographed.

This is one of a dozen they have up at the moment, of London at night.



http://cbsnews2.cbsistatic.com/hub/i...-london-wm.jpg

Laforet was a pioneer in the use of tilt-shift photography (a previous thread on which included a link to the video The Sandpit, which includes some very fly-like helicopters - see time index 0:28 - 0:57).

The same heli-borne tilt-shift technique is used for the NYC intro to Colbert's new show.

I/C

I work as Vincent's technician and flew with him on all of the photos in that gallery (and on hundreds of other flights in the past 10 years).

It's from this forum that I've found operators to fly with, made decisions about where to fly, focused on safety, and learned where our limits are.

Glad to see these images get picked up here on PPRuNe! :ok:

Amazing how many people think a fuzzy, blurred image is artistic. Shallow debt of field madness in my opinion. Each to their own...

Well, they did say that it's art ... so maybe it's a matter of beauty being somewhat subjective.

@Mike:
Cool! There is much goodness in PPRuNe. :ok:

Just a thought, but had he got these photos by driving on the M25 would there be any validity in a headline of "Artistic use of the M25."?

The helo was no more an artistic influence than the tripod he'd have used on the pavement or in a park. Let's not get above ourselves!

Actually, by being above the ground and looking down the helo's advantage was used in a way that IMO is unique, to frame the shot.