Meet Richard Cooke, the photographer behind these amazing aerial images and find out how a head for heights and a love for photography was needed for this assignment.
Richard Cooke, is an action and location photographer specializing in exciting and unusual images. He prefers the freedom, spontaneity and sense of reality of 35mm and, using innovative techniques, covers a wide range of subjects. Working with the Red Arrows, he pioneered the first head-on, air-to-air pictures of the team coming straight at the lens and has since developed similar techniques for stunning pictures of all the RAF fast jets, civil aircraft, cars, motor bikes and other fast moving subjects.
In this interview Richard explains to us how the images where taken and the lengths he went to capture these beautiful images.
What other campaigns have you worked on which have involved aerial photography?
For many years I specialised in military subjects, particularly air-to-air photography of fast jets for editorial uses and for RAF advertising, but the first air-to-ground photography looking straight down, was for a special Millennium postage stamp. Because postage stamps are so small, the images have to be graphically very strong. The Millennium stamp led on to a set of 10 first class stamps celebrating the British coast and this in turn led to a Thames & Hudson book called Coastline UK and eventually became an exhibition sponsored by WWF. I was amazed at the variety and spectacular beauty of the coast and so this commission for Enjoy England was pretty much a logical extension of this earlier work. I am fascinated by the strong graphic and almost abstract nature of the shots that you can get by looking straight down from a helicopter.
How were the images taken?
For this campaign I used Agusta 109 helicopters with a door off. I chose this aircraft because it has a retractable undercarriage instead of skids which meant that, wearing a harness, I can kneel on the floor and lean out over the side. I have to be careful not to touch the aircraft with anything but my knees in order to insulate the camera from the vibrations and movement of the helicopter in the hover. I then have a view looking vertically straight down and on the intercom, I give instructions to the pilot to position the aircraft exactly where I want it. Flying in a helicopter at 2 or 3 thousand feet with the door off, is extremely cold. I wear salopettes over my trousers, layers of warm clothes including fingerless gloves and knee pads – not very stylish but they do the job. My camera is not only round my neck but also attached to the aircraft. You have to be extremely careful that nothing can fall out because it would clearly kill anyone that happened to be underneath.
What was your favourite part of this shoot and why?
I've always enjoyed working from aircraft and working with highly professional people but it is really all about the pictures for me and you really do get some amazingly beautiful and fascinating sights from helicopters.
Probably the most exciting and innovative aspect of this job for me was the added dimension of shooting stills for television. We wanted to add limited movement through a series of still pictures, so the most satisfying thing was when everything came together and the photography coincided, as planned, with something specific happening on the ground like a steam train coming through or a hot air balloon or a surfer catching a wave.
What were your top 3 locations shot and why?
I really find it impossible to give my 3 favourite locations because the main thing about this job and England is that it is so amazingly varied and it is this variety that is the best part. I did enjoy photographing the rural locations because, at this time of year, the colours are so bright and fresh and everything looks new. As you fly over the country you realise just how much beautiful countryside we have and the different tones and colours you see looking down on an English woodland in Spring are spectacularly beautiful.
Any additional info on why certain locations were chosen?
When planning the job, we had to consider the proximity of the locations to the helicopter companies. The Agusta 109 is not a cheap helicopter to hire and so it was important to try and minimize the positioning time. It also meant that we tried to group locations so that we could cover more than one subject at a time but the changeable spring weather meant this didn't always work. For some of the subjects like car racing, horse racing, the roller coaster and even the steam train, there were several location options so we used these to tie in with other places like Leeds Castle and Bath, that were fixed.
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