Somewhere Over The Rainbow

One of the coolest parts about my job is that one of our responsibilities is to document and display crime scenes through the use of photographs. If that scene is large enough, it may need aerial photographs. And that means I get a free helicopter tour of Oahu. It is spectacular. Now mind you...this is not a cushy helicopter with where you are encased safely away from the wind and rain. It is a helicopter shell with one window in the front and gaping holes in the side of copter where there should be ...I don't know what you call it...doors? There's just barely room for four adults and you sit on metal frames with seat belts. And then you fly with wind gushing over your lap around 500 to 800 feet above the ground.

It is so cool!!! We had to take pictures of Kaneohe so we flew over the Koolau's following the Pali Highway. They were also searching for a stolen van so we drove...oops, wrong word, we flew all the way to Haleiwa and Wahiawa and did a full circle. It's amazing. They can see everything, they scanned all the neighborhoods, parking lots, and road. And if there was a questionable car, they would just circle in tighter and lower until they could read the license plate and then they would call it in and check if it was stolen. One of my pictures has a car with a surfboard, that car raised flags because it was just sitting on a dirt road out in the farmlands. Once we got too close, I guess it spooked the driver and he booked it to the nearest highway.

Picture 1: I sat right behind the pilot so I could direct him to where I needed to shoot from. I like this shot and I tried the "texturizing" effect that Nely's tutoral explained.