A narrative picture essay

Set yourself an assignment and produce 5-15 photographs to illustrate the narrative.  Well, I was BLESSED with the opportunity to participate in and photograph a helicopter expedition with some National Trust rangers transporting rocks and boulders in the Lake District for some Fix the Fells path repair work.  This event was actually for the purposes of producing two of the photographs for my sequence for Assignment Five, however I was also able to capture this mini narrative in the process.  My focus in this sequence is around the helicopter itself (obviously there were two runs, so I was able to photograph the helicopter both inside and out).  The people in the red jackets are the NT rangers. The photography on this day was very hard, the helicopter was very dark and the light was changing constantly.  I took around 2000 pictures for the two that I needed for the Assignment.... I also used this as a gratuitous opportunity to practice with my fish eye lens :-)

My original selection was 28 photos long, showing the journey there, the journey back, and a bit of helicopter doing its job.  It was quite hard to narrow this down and decide what wasn't really necessary to the narrative, or what had already been conveyed in a different photograph.  In the end I cut back on some of the shots of the helicopter getting up and down as once it was off the ground, it was obvious it was off the ground!  I ended up with a few more than specified, but I think these are all essential.

BIG BIG THANK YOU to Tanya Oliver and the National Trust for letting me join them on the two days of helicopter drops!

Here is my sequence: