[Leica] Niagara Falls Pano NOW FROM HELICOPTER! :-)

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (tedgrant at shaw.ca)]

Aram showed:
Subject: [LRflex] Niagara Falls Pano<<<<<

>>>For the first shot from my 8 week trip I thought I'd post a 3 shot 
>>>panorama of Niagara Falls taken from the Canadian side.  Made three trips 
>>>to the falls and saw day and night from each side.  Impressive waterfall.
http://gallery.leica-users.org/d/191327-1/Niagara_Falls-4381-Edit-Edit.jpg<<<

Hi Aram,
Very nice, not too often one sees the Falls in Pano format in the evening.

But you haven't lived until you've photographed Niagara Falls from a 
helicopter with the door off and you are right over the top and can feel the 
spray in your face. :-) Awesome angle!! :-) A touch scary though because if 
the machine crapped out we were history at the bottom of the gorge! :-( Oh 
yes I had to keep wiping spray off the lens. :-(

However the best part of that ride was the telephone message I left with the 
photo editor's secretary.

"Tell Bill the shoot went very well, but we had a little incident when we 
flew too close to the Niagara Tower and broke some windows with the rotor 
blades hitting the tower! They're pissed off and want to know who is going 
to pay for it?" :-)  "Tell him to call me when he's back from lunch."  Me? I 
continue shooting at ground level for the rest of the afternoon.

Now anyone with an ounce of common sense intelligence... photo editors are a 
rare breed when it comes to things like that!  He would've known the pilot 
and myself would've been dead if that incident occurred in real life.

About 4.30 I arrive back at the hotel and the desk people tell me there have 
been frantic phone calls from Ottawa and it is imperative I phone 
immediately!

I do and the photo editor goes into a kind of maniac screaming rage words 
not fit to repeat. I stood there listening and letting him go on, finally he 
quits. Now appreciate that this SOB has been a master at sucking 
photographers in with all kinds of fictitious tales of disaster for years. 
So my response was:

"GOTCHA!!" And hung-up! :-)

He never brought the subject up again! However it evokes such a wonderful 
feeling of "GOTCHA" I always have a nice smile of satisfaction each time I 
relate the incident. :-)

The other photographers of course heard about it and were in great fits of 
laughing and shaking my hand for getting him so beautifully! But it was a 
cool moment in time. Pure unadulterated satisfaction at burning his a... ! 
;-)

Dr. ted