Rotors

Emergency personnel work to load an injured motorist into an Air Evac Lifeteam helicopter after a three-car collision on Arkansas 45 east of Goshen. Two other motorists were transported via ambulance to area hospitals.

The severity and remote location of this wreck created the need to send out the Air Evac Lifeteam helicopter, which landed in the middle of the state highway and closed it for nearly 40 minutes. It's a dramatic thing to see a helicopter used in this way and I was glad to have gotten to the scene and to have made a photo of it just before it took off.

In the back of my mind, every time I shoot aircraft, is a former editor who lamented when I turned in a photo of an airplane in flight. I was quite proud of the photo and didn't understand what he didn't like about it. I had shot the photo with the shutter set at 1/1000th of second, which made for a crisp photo, but froze the blades of the propeller. It looked like the plane was going to crash because the rotors weren't turning. When I looked at it again, I had to agree. It looked funny. If these folks were busy loading this woman into the door of a helicopter with the rotor that looks as if it was not turning. That wouldn't look nearly as exciting. In flight, it looks plain weird, but it's an easy thing to forget about when you're shooting.

Though the blades are moving quickly, one can shoot at 1/500th of a second and still freeze the rotor of a helicopter for the most part. To look right, I go with at most 1/250th, as I did here. Honestly, 1/125 of a second looks the best. It's slow and you almost always get camera shake, but the aircraft ends up looking right.