Ever the optimist, I correctly second guessed the pilot and made some hasty decisions as to what could be done. With very little time I cranked up the ISO, fired off a couple of test shots and came up with this.
For the technically curious, the background came from a Median Stack of 70 images , taken as the helicopter landed, obliterating the otherwise horrific background noise and the helicopter photos were from eight separate layered images. Taken about 20 minutes into official nighttime/blue hour. It has, some technical short comings lessons learned although I doubt if there will be a next time but you never know.
G-WASS EC135, Scone by Wallace Shackleton, on FlickrThis one was shot more conventionally, waiting until the green pad lights went out and the foreground lit by my light to minimise my shadow, although there's a trace of the tripod in the picture from the floodlighting.
G-WASS EC135, Scone by Wallace Shackleton, on Flickr
Really colourful and very nice to boot, got to be a POW there somehow, if not it must be based on popularity to score there 