Archive: December 2010 shoot for Departures Magazine.

One of my favorite shoots from my career. Susan White, the former Director of Photography for Vanity Fair recommended me to Departures Magazine for this shoot on helicopter safari’s in Africa. The magazine needed someone equally as strong in portraits as aerials. (up to that point, I had only shot aerials for Vanity Fair, so I was pleased that Susan knew of my portrait work.)

The writer, the wonderful Sophy Roberts had worked with helicopter pilot extraordinaire, Ben Simpson of Tropic Air in Kenya before and had arranged for us to fly over Northern Ethiopia and the Danakil Depression after Ben finished up a private charter.

While waiting for Ben to complete his charter flights, Sophy and I along with a guide went to visit two Coptic Priests who lived in a church hewn from the side of a mountain, 1000 feet above the valley below.

Not a tough climb, except I had my ThinkTank backpack stuffed with Nikon D3s bodies and several zoom lenses. Once we made it to the church, I instantly wished I had brought my fast primes with me rather than the zooms. Always good to challenge myself.

While the D3s was pretty decent at higher ISO and low-light, we are still talking about the interior of a church that was dug into the side of a mountain with rock windows. I processed these files in the newest version of Capture One Pro and am quite amazed at how much more detail I can pull out of the files compared to when I originally processed the images.