EP05 – Aerial Photography Over Iceland

Straight out of the icy waters of Silfra I went to charge my batteries overnight and head into the opposite direction: Up! Into the air with a helicopter to capture Iceland from above.

Today I’d like to share my experience and knowledge of aerial photography and tips on shooting out of a helicopter and what you should know before you go as well as the best possible camera settings to get the best possible shots.

Take a moment to watch the episode below and find out more below the video what kind of gear and settings I used and even a Lightroom Preset that will help you with those aerial shots – from chopper, drone or just the top of a tall building.

OK, this one is a little less of an adventure, but to stay true to the series I’m creating I’m going to still call it that.

I got to join a family on one of Nordur Helicopter’s ‘Fire and Ice’ tours which meant 2 landings and about a 2 hour flight in total – one on a glacier and one right next to a geothermal area.

We started off from Keflavik Airport from where we flew over Reykjavik straight towards and over the mountains and the highest waterfall in Iceland: Glymur and then on to the Þórisjökull Glacier where we landed for our first trip.

Iceland really is a such an interesting country for aerial photography. With it’s countless textures and colours that just keep changing and mixing after every stone and river it’s truly spectacular. Taking a bride eye view on this really shows you how ‘active’ and ‘in the making’ this landscape really is. Nothing seems like it’s been there for very long and nothing seems like it will stay or last in any way.

If you ever have the chance to visit Iceland I highly recommend stepping into a helicopter to see it from above. It’s truly an extraordinary experience worth spending a ‘little’ money on. You won’t regret it!

Now back to the flight.

As we approached the glacier I was allowed to open the window for a bit and get even better shots. Good, because the textures of ice, crevasses and waterfalls of the melting ice I was seeing right there were unbelievable.

After a short landing right on top of the glacier, a little snowball fight and a few selfies later we were on our way over the Silfra Gap and on to the geothermal area where Reykjavik gets all it’s power and hot water from that keeps those roads nice and warm and snow free in winter.

This was my favourite stretch of the flight. Unbelievable amounts of texture, colours and variety made for an amazing amount of awesome photos in a short amount of time. And flying over the Silfra Gap and spotting the exact spot I had snorkeled the clearest water on the planet the day before was interesting too.

After the second landing amidst smoke and bubbling puddles of sulfuric mud we got aboard a last time to fly the last stretch back to Keflavik Airport. What an experience!

Special Thanks to Nordurflug for taking me on this adventure and actually making these photographs possible!

Shooting out of a helicopter is anything but easy. Helicopters are very delicate and the slightest wind will move them around. I’ve listed a few tips below from my experience so you if you ever get the chance to shoot out of a helicopter you can be prepared that little bit extra than I was.

Preparation was everything here. I made a clear choice about what lenses I wanted to use and what I wanted to use them fore and arranged all my gear in a way that I could blindly grab each camera knowing what setup I was working with.

Time is your enemy. Since we were flying from A to B to C to D to I never got to see the same place twice. So it was then or never if I wanted to get a good shot.

I was lucky to be able to use 3 camera for this shoot. 2 OM-D E-M1’s and 1 OM-D E-M5 Mark II. This was going to save me time as I didn’t have waste precious seconds swapping lenses.

Initially equipped them with the M.Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8 PRO, the M.Zuiko 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO and the M.Zuiko 300mm f/4 PRO lens respectively. I thought I had it all covered.

With our rather low flying altitude and high ground speed it was pretty much impossible to capture anything with the 300mm and so I swapped it to the M.Zuiko 7-14mm f/2.8 PRO right after the first landing on the glacier.

The 7-14mm turned out to be such a good lens for the inside shots. Showing the tools, equipment, people, helicopter. The whole behind the scenes stuff – I’m very glad I swapped them!

When flying through the mountains the 12-40mm was perfect. It offered the perfect perspective to show the bigger picture without showing too much distant haze.

When it came to texture shots I mostly used the 40-150mm at around 100mm.

Looking at my metadata I can now see that I my shots grouped mostly at 12mm. 40mm and a very even spread of images between 50-120mm.

I also attached battery grips to each of the cameras to avoid running out of power since I knew I was going to be shooting A LOT. But I ended up having enough battery power with one battery per camera… but better be prepared than sorry.

I filmed occasionally while I wasn’t shooting and also made use of the Olympus TG Tracker Action camera which I attached to the pilot’s seat to film myself as well as the cockpit/view. With it’s amazing 204º field of view it’s a great little action camera to capture pretty much everything in your field of view. It’s the first action cam with 5-axis electronic image stabilisation which really did an amazing job considering how much the helicopter and the pilots seat where vibrating and shaking during the flight! Think driving over rough gravel without suspension.

I had to record the voice over audio after the flight as the helicopter was way too loud to do any talking to the camera.

Editing was tough! Haze is your enemy when it comes to aerial photography. Pick a clear day if you can to avoid any nasty editing surprises! If you can’t shoot the stuff that’s right below you. Avoid shooting the horizon too much.

The further your subject is from you the harder it gets to pull out those details when editing.

I know there’a ‘Dehaze’ function in Adobe Lightroom, and it’s really not that bad, but to really bring out those textures, colours and details in my shots I needed to do more than that.

A LOT of tweaking on the tonal curve as well as individual colour hues and luminescence was what really made the right stuff pop.

Check out this before – after of one of my shots to see what kind of detail you can pull out of a RAW image file!

I’ve put together a new Preset Pack for you to download. It’s based on my images I took here and can be used for any aerial images or hazy day photos that you take. Obviously it’s not a solution for every image, but I reckon it could build a very solid base for your work. It’s a creative process and ultimately it is up to you to use the presets in whatever way you want.

The pack includes 6 Presets and all the necessary instructions on how to install them (for Windows and Mac)

click on the image below to get to the download.

Faroe Islands! I just completed a 2 week trip to the Faroe Islands and will be dedicating 2 episodes to this absolutely amazing, remote place.
In one episode I will take you along as I skateboard the perfect, empty – ok deserted – roads of the country

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I put a ton of time and energy into these episodes for you to enjoy and learn from and if you’d like to show your support it would be awesome if you could subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Obviously buying Lightroom Preset Packs, Prints or digital images from me supports me a great deal and makes it possible for me to produce future episodes. 😉

If you haven’t yet seen the first few episodes. I recommend watching (and reading about them) in the links below.