Monthly Archives: August 2013

Construction Helicopters at the Mart

Previously I posted about the work with Midwest Helicopters at the Merchandise Mart. This post included the stills of the job while this one had some video. That job was all about erecting the steel to support the new chiller units. Construction Helicopters had the job to lift the chillers themselves since they were considerably heavier than the S-58T can lift.

This time I ended up shooting the lift from along the river. While I had originally planned to be back on the roof, the plan changed but it ended up being a better solution. I wish I had planned it to be so but I will take being lucky any day. The view from the ground was one I had intended for the first lift if it had gone to the second day so this time i was able to get shots of the building with the helicopter operating in front of and above it.

This was the first time I had seen the Super Puma that Construction Helicopters have acquired. I have had a soft spot for the Puma family for many years dating back to a model of an RAF Puma I made as a kid. It is a great looking helicopter and certainly a powerful performer.

The weather was excellent and the lift went very smoothly. The chillers were picked from a barge on the river in front of the Mart and lifted to the roof. I certainly wasn’t alone in watching the work as quite a crowd gathered along the river to watch. Great job to everyone involved.

FedEx shots

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A recent trip to Seattle gave me some time at the very beginning and end of the day to pay a visit to SeaTac. Plenty of interesting things are to be seen there. One specific area of interest for me was the amount of traffic for FedEx. They had a lot of movements with a variety of types. (A contractor operates Cessna Caravans for them which I saw but did not get any shots of sadly.) With FedEx just having announced a reduction in types in their fleet plan, this was a more interesting opportunity than it might otherwise have been.

Two McDonnell Douglas types came through while I was there. The MD-11s are busy as usual but I also got MD-10s. Meanwhile, the Airbus A300s were also in use. I don’t get to see them often and, since they are going to be retired in large numbers soon, I might not get many more chances. With movements at the beginning and end of the day, I was able to catch them several times. They were busy. I am assuming the middle of the day is quieter for them so I didn’t miss much while at work.

The only unfortunate side of shooting the FedEx jets was their departure profiles. When on the departure end of things, I was generally in a good location to catch the jets as they came by. FedEx was the exception. I don’t know whether they practice rapid climb outs due to flying into some dangerous places or just for noise abatement (they do have some aging aircraft) but the result is that they climb fast and are much higher than average by the time they reach you. Nothing much I can do about that of course but it was a bit of a shame. Approach shots were not an issue of course. The three degree glideslope is the same for everyone! Time to enjoy some of these jets before they go for good.

Photoshop CC Shake Reduction

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While a lot of people have been quite vexed by the introduction of a subscription based approach to the Adobe software suite including Photoshop, I decided to get over it and upgrade to Photoshop CC. One of the features introduced in CC is Shake Reduction. This is an effort at dealing with motion blur in images. It isn’t going to rescue a crappy shot but it is potentially able to to take an almost good shot and rescue it. I decided to experiment with it on an image I recently took.

The image above is a combination of the original image without sharpening and the filtered version. (It is recommended that you turn off sharpening before running the filter or it will make things break up more.) The effect actually seems to be quite useful. I should note that I tried it on several shots and they didn’t all respond as well to the filter. However, it did make quite a good upgrade to this image. I shall potentially use this again if there is an image I really like that is not quite as sharp as I would like. Another tool to potentially use but not one I think I can rely on.

Merchandise Mart video

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In a previous post I showed some images I took at the Midwest Helicopters lifting job at the Merchandise Mart. As is normal for me these days, I also took the time to get a bunch of video and, finally, I have got around to editing this. I wanted to focus a little more on the guys working on the roof rather than just the helicopter operations. Of course, there is still plenty of footage of the flying too! I hope you enjoy.

Clow Cavalcade

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Air shows are not planned to be a big part of my year this year. However, I did take the time to go a short distance out of the city recently to a small event that I like. Clow is an airport down in Bolingbrook, southwest of downtown Chicago. The airport holds an event every year for the local community to show what goes on at the airport and to try and generate interest in the aviation industry. It is not an airshow. There is not a flying display. However, a number of aircraft do visit and make some passes to show the crowd some interesting aircraft.

A number of aircraft are on display. Some warbirds show up and the EAA owned Ford Trimotor was providing rides throughout the event. Usually they have some parachutists displaying throughout the event (and I have previously shot them at work) but, unfortunately, the weather did not prove to be cooperative this year and the cloud base was too low to allow them to jump.

A number of aircraft manufacturers have their aircraft on display with Cessna, Piper, Cirrus and Diamond all having aircraft available to view by potential (and wishful thinking) buyers. Eclipse also brought one of their Total Eclipse 500 aircraft.

I was most interested in getting some shots of the aircraft either flying or on display but an event like this is also about seeing how the crowds interact with the aircraft and their owners. It is a very open event with people having the chance to get close to the aircraft and the operations. Since the conditions weren’t great, I often put down the camera and just watched everyone having fun. (Obviously no pictures of that!)