Medical Helicopter Help

[DirtKicker44]

I've been trying for years to upload photos of medical helicopters with no luck. Unlike commercial and civilian aircraft, medical helicopters are incredibly hard to access and incredibly hard to photograph as they're often on hospital roofs, fields in the middle of nowhere, or secured hangars far away from the public eye. I'm lucky enough to work in a field that gives me access to a hospital rooftop helipad and emergency scenes to try to get these pictures, but I've never once had a photo approved. Tons of the pictures of medical helicopters in my area are wildly inaccurate or out of date, or extremely old. I'm at my wit's end. I've tried asking for help in other places but all that gets me are solicitations for people to "fix up the photo for $50". I even had our school of arts take a crack at getting a photo approved that was worked on by the professor to no avail, and still rejected. I've attached some photos to see where I'm going wrong. I'm no graphic designer, not a professional photographer, I don't make a living doing this, I'm just a paramedic with unique access to medical helicopters.

Any help would be amazing.

[kx3dnnnn]

Hi, I just started out on here so I dont really have any idea why your photos might not be getting accepted but all I can recommend is to look over the uploading guidelines: https://www.jetphotos.com/uploadguidelines/ but your photos are really good!

[787Dream]

Glad to help first responders! Not a screener, but I can observe some issues. Do you mind post some of the rejection reasons so we can think on these?

First photo: contrast (too much shadow clipping), quality (the image looks blurry and distorted). Potentially "part of aircraft cutoff", but probably ok.
Second photo: too far (zoom in a bit more), centering (subject leaning to the left), some shadow clipping (tail is too dark, but visually ok, just not good histogram), quality.
Third photo: too far, centering (low in frame, {center the fuselage + rotor head only, do not include blades}, left in frame {including rotar blade for left-right centering}), underexposed, grainy, soft (part of quality issues)

Not sure what you use for shooting, but you may need a camera+lens that produces better raw quality. Please look through some of the submissions in the DB (preferably some of the not backlit photos of the week that are in 1280px) to get a feeling of the quality of the image required.
Good luck!

[dlowwa]

I've been trying for years to upload photos of medical helicopters with no luck. Unlike commercial and civilian aircraft, medical helicopters are incredibly hard to access and incredibly hard to photograph as they're often on hospital roofs, fields in the middle of nowhere, or secured hangars far away from the public eye. I'm lucky enough to work in a field that gives me access to a hospital rooftop helipad to try to get these pictures, but I've never once had a photo approved. Tons of the pictures of medical helicopters in my area are wildly inaccurate or out of date, or extremely old. I'm at my wit's end. I've tried asking for help in other places but all that gets me are solicitations for people to "fix up the photo for $50". I even had our school of arts take a crack at getting a photo approved that was worked on by the professor to no avail, and still rejected. I've attached some photos to see where I'm going wrong. I'm no graphic designer, not a professional photographer, I don't make a living doing this, I'm just a paramedic with unique access to medical helicopters.

Hi,

While there is lenience for less common subjects, it seems unfortunately you're not working with the best quality. If I'm mistaken, and these were actually taken with a decent camera, then it simply comes down to very poor editing. However, if these were taken with your phone or some other compact camera, it might be difficult to make them acceptable no matter how you edit them.

If you think the originals are actually of good quality, you can post one here, or contact me directly to have a look. On the other hand, probably better not to waste your time trying to 'fix' something that might simply not be fixable.

[DirtKicker44]

Glad to help first responders! Not a screener, but I can observe some issues. Do you mind post some of the rejection reasons so we can think on these?

First photo: contrast (too much shadow clipping), quality (the image looks blurry and distorted). Potentially "part of aircraft cutoff", but probably ok.
Second photo: too far (zoom in a bit more), centering (subject leaning to the left), some shadow clipping (tail is too dark, but visually ok, just not good histogram), quality.
Third photo: too far, centering (low in frame, {center the fuselage + rotor head only, do not include blades}, left in frame {including rotar blade for left-right centering}), underexposed, grainy, soft (part of quality issues)

Not sure what you use for shooting, but you may need a camera+lens that produces better raw quality. Please look through some of the submissions in the DB (preferably some of the not backlit photos of the week that are in 1280px) to get a feeling of the quality of the image required.
Good luck!

Sure thing, the first one was rejected for overprocessing and under sharpened, the second photo was rejected for dust, and a third was rejected for being backlit, which I'm not sure how is possible, considering you can see the shadow of the rotor on the fuselage

None of these are taken with any professional equipment, being a first responder I don't carry any type of high quality cameras with us on the fire trucks, there's no need for it, Plus having to carry all that around day in and day out when medical flights are pretty rare is a waste of space on the apparatus, Plus that tends to draw the ire of chiefs and the public in general when they see you walking around with a camera instead of doing other stuff. These were all taken with a Samsung S22 Ultra.

I don't know if I'm at the point where I just start paying somebody to professionally edit the photos or not, I'd hate to start wasting my money if photos are still going to get rejected, I'm just trying to get some good photos of these awesome helicopters out there, considering some of the entries for these are either completely wrong, not available, or not of the right aircraft at all. I once met a guy at the airport here who is taking photos of aircraft, I was telling about my frustration and he laughed and said unless I had a college degree in graphic arts and thousands of dollars in camera equipment, it was unlikely I would ever get a photo accepted here, I'm kind of at a loss as to what to do.

[DirtKicker44]

Hi,

While there is lenience for less common subjects, it seems unfortunately you're not working with the best quality. If I'm mistaken, and these were actually taken with a decent camera, then it simply comes down to very poor editing. However, if these were taken with your phone or some other compact camera, it might be difficult to make them acceptable no matter how you edit them.

If you think the originals are actually of good quality, you can post one here, or contact me directly to have a look. On the other hand, probably better not to waste your time trying to 'fix' something that might simply not be fixable.

I'm not sure what you mean by decent camera, but it's nothing professional. Being a firefighter paramedic doesn't afford me the opportunity to carry professional camera equipment with me at work, so I take these photos in raw with my Samsung S22 Ultra. Besides that, it tends to draw the ire of the Chiefs and the public in general when they see us taking photos versus doing something else, so I do the best I can with the situation I'm in. I've then had several people help me either do it myself in Photoshop or, more recently, a professor from the local university who does a lot of the university's photo design and editing classes, but everything still gets rejected.

I guess I'm more disappointed that there's no consideration towards the rarity of the aircraft. These aren't airliners that are flying in and out of airports daily with plenty of opportunities for photos, but rather extremely special use aircraft that are almost exclusively inaccessible to the vast majority of photographers out there. For instance, the aircraft that the top photo just replaced, was N5UV, it's only photo in here was taken in 2003 (and to be honest it's not a great photo at all), and it is no longer visible from the public at all, as they now have a private hanger in a different section of the airport. The other two aircraft either have a completely incorrect picture for the tail number or no picture at all. It seems to me, and I might be way off base, but the site is okay with having no picture of all versus having a picture that might have one or two small problems, which kind of boggles me because I thought it's about appreciating the aircraft, and not the skills and ability of the photographer and their editing equipment.

[dlowwa]

I'm not sure what you mean by decent camera, but it's nothing professional. Being a firefighter paramedic doesn't afford me the opportunity to carry professional camera equipment with me at work, so I take these photos in raw with my Samsung S22 Ultra. Besides that, it tends to draw the ire of the Chiefs and the public in general when they see us taking photos versus doing something else, so I do the best I can with the situation I'm in. I've then had several people help me either do it myself in Photoshop or, more recently, a professor from the local university who does a lot of the university's photo design and editing, but everything still gets rejected.

I guess I'm more disappointed that there's no consideration towards the rarity of the aircraft. These aren't airliners that are flying in and out of airports daily with plenty of opportunities for photos, but rather extremely special use aircraft that are almost exclusively inaccessible to the vast majority of photographers out there. For instance, the aircraft that the top photo just replaced, was N5UV, it's only photo in here was taken in 2003 (and to be honest it's not a great photo at all), and it is no longer visible from the public at all, as they now have a private hanger in a different section of the airport. The other two aircraft either have a completely incorrect picture for the tail number or no picture at all. It seems to me, and I might be way off base, but the site is okay with having no picture of all versus having a picture that might have one or two small problems, which kind of boggles me because I thought it's about appreciating the aircraft, and not the skills and ability of the photographer and their editing equipment.

As I said, there is some leniency for rarer subjects, but only up to a certain point. And as I seem to have guessed correctly, you are shooting with your phone. That will pretty much limit you to taking images close up to the subject in good weather conditions. Anything else (subject far away, poor weather, night, etc..) is unlikely to have the quality to be acceptable.

If you'd like actually like help, feel free to do as I have suggested above, but if this more of a place to vent/complain, I hope it's served that purpose

[DirtKicker44]

As I said, there is some leniency for rarer subjects, but only up to a certain point. And as I seem to have guessed correctly, you are shooting with your phone. That will pretty much limit you to taking images close up to the subject in good weather conditions. Anything else (subject far away, poor weather, night, etc..) is unlikely to have the quality to be acceptable.

If you'd like actually like help, feel free to do as I have suggested above, but if this more of a place to vent/complain, I hope it's served that purpose

I'll go ahead and post the originals, what format would you like me to post them in, also the top photo was taken from 35 ft, son on the aircraft, very few clouds at the sky, which I think we can all agree is about the safest one can take a photo of a helicopter with the engines at flight power.

I'm not looking to vent or complain, but to tell me the solution is to carry $1,000 of camera equipment with me everywhere that I go at work, which is what you're essentially saying when you say that a camera phone isn't good enough, isn't a solution, that's more of a put-down than anything, but we're on the internet and I could be very well misinterpreting your intents.

I have the photos in raw as well as JPEG and PNG, so just let me know what format you would like to submit them in and I will be more than happy to upload it here, I'm not sure if the website will let me do raw photos though, I can't say that I've tried.

[DirtKicker44]

As I said, there is some leniency for rarer subjects, but only up to a certain point. And as I seem to have guessed correctly, you are shooting with your phone. That will pretty much limit you to taking images close up to the subject in good weather conditions. Anything else (subject far away, poor weather, night, etc..) is unlikely to have the quality to be acceptable.

If you'd like actually like help, feel free to do as I have suggested above, but if this more of a place to vent/complain, I hope it's served that purpose

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to vent, I guess just be real with me, is there any chance that any photos taken from an emergency scene like what I've been doing, have a chance of getting posted here. If not, I'm not sure there's going to be any solution, professional equipments not going to work, phones and point and shoot cameras are pretty much going to be the extent of it, so if in your opinion there's no chance of it happening, then honestly I won't waste anybody's time, I apologize if I come off as rude or inconsiderate, I'm not.

[787Dream]

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to vent, I guess just be real with me, is there any chance that any photos taken from an emergency scene like what I've been doing, have a chance of getting posted here. If not, I'm not sure there's going to be any solution, professional equipments not going to work, phones and point and shoot cameras are pretty much going to be the extent of it, so if in your opinion there's no chance of it happening, then honestly I won't waste anybody's time, I apologize if I come off as rude or inconsiderate, I'm not.

In fact, two photos amongst yesterday’s most viewed photo (on front page) are taken with phones. One is a RedMi and the other is iPhone 14Pro something. So phone photography is not impossible. But you do need to look into how to improve the photo quality (and adjust exposure) using the phone. I personally have no experience with phone photography, but I think it would require you to at least get close to the aircraft, as almost all phones do not have (good) telephoto features, but they usually have ok to good mid focal range quality; still, I am not sure about your Samsung S22 Ultra photography performance…

I would definitely love to see some rare aircraft and certainly taken in great lighting conditions.

good luck!

[dlowwa]

I'll go ahead and post the originals, what format would you like me to post them in, also the top photo was taken from 35 ft, son on the aircraft, very few clouds at the sky, which I think we can all agree is about the safest one can take a photo of a helicopter with the engines at flight power.

I'm not looking to vent or complain, but to tell me the solution is to carry $1,000 of camera equipment with me everywhere that I go at work, which is what you're essentially saying when you say that a camera phone isn't good enough, isn't a solution, that's more of a put-down than anything, but we're on the internet and I could be very well misinterpreting your intents.

I have the photos in raw as well as JPEG and PNG, so just let me know what format you would like to submit them in and I will be more than happy to upload it here, I'm not sure if the website will let me do raw photos though, I can't say that I've tried.

No put down intended, just trying to be real, as you requested. Realistically, standards here are very high due to the volume of submissions, so it does unfortunately in most cases put the onus on the photographer to use the best equipment available. That said, if you're shooting just for yourself (without the aim of having it accepted here), then there's no reason you can't take images with your phone you can be happy with.

https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/9078816

This was taken with an iPhone, so if you know what you're doing and with the right conditions, it's certainly possible to have pics from a phone camera accepted. I'd estimate every day there are a handful of images taken with phones that are accepted, so it's not an impossible task.

JPEG would be the best, PNGs are not uploadable, and are not really suitable for these kinds of images.

If you don't feel like posting publicly, you can message me and I can tell you how to send it to me.

[787Dream]

Congrats on the first submission! It looks awesome!