HELICOPTER
Usually during the photoshoot we try and make sure we score at least two or three helicopter sessions to cover all the wave, race and freeride equipment. For a 1 hour shoot, the going rate is around a thousand dollars, so making sure you choose the right moment to take off is critical. In the chopper I normally take both of my 1Dx bodies, one loaded with the 70-200 F2.8 zoom and the other armed with my 24-70 2.8 for wider shots.
The freeride heli shoot, normally involves all the riders and lots of boards and rigs so it is an enormous amount of preparation to organize everybody to the beach, rig twenty or more sails and set up all the boards. So the last thing you want is for it to cloud over right before the helicopter is about to take off. Of course this year this is exactly what happened and the whole team had to wait on standby for five hours on the beach while we waited for it to clear, which it didn’t! You have to keep your thought process rational in this sort of situation and not jump into any hasty decisions which could cost a lot of money and still have to be reshot again if the weather turns cloudy anyways.