The Crestock Photography Contest 2007

This is a self-portrait. The camera, Canon T90 with FD15 mm fisheye lens, is mounted on the helmet with an aluminium bar so that it's distance to the helmet is some 10cm. I trig the camera by my mouth with a small pressure switch which isn't visible through the mirror vizor. The vizor's mirror surface together with a fisheye perspective creates the alien-like look of my head. A film is Fujicolor 400 neg. Settings: time 1/350, aperture 11, focus approx. 0,4m. I scanned the frame with Nikon 8000 ED film scanner and imported the file to Photoshop. In order to make the final adjusting easy, I built accurate masks for all the objects and different areas of the picture, so I could balance them separately. The picture is taken above Hanko peninsula, Finland, in June 2003. I'm tracking horizontally on my back while the other guys are chasing me. The exit altitude is 4000m, which gives us shy 60 seconds time for filming. I had dreamed of taking pics with this kind of set up already for several years. Finally I could help nothing but go for it, even though I knew my neck was once injured and not in so good condition. A skydiver's head tends to swing forward when the parachute opens and if there are any extra weight attached to the helmet, it may stress the neck heavily. I did some twenty of these jumps with different picture ideas and I could literally hear my neck trying to tell me something every time the parachute was opening while my head still tried to keep falling. Next spring I went for the surgery and now there are three vertebras fused by metal in my neck. What wouldn't we do for good pictures? Still jumping with camera along : )