Call the Cops?!

As I walked home from the paper shop this morning I saw a police car parked on the local flyover which carries the road over the main East Coast train line, with a policeman looking over the parapet. A few moments later a helicopter appeared and hovered vertically above me over the railway line for several minutes before zooming off again. By the time I walked over the flyover the policeman had gone so I couldn't ask him what it was all about: I assume that either they'd been following a miscreant, or that there'd been reports of a tresspasser on the line.

I had my camera with me so thought I'd experiment with photographing the 'copter. First I tried an exposure of 1/800th second but that froze the blades, making for an uninteresting photo (and could make one worry that its motor had failed!!). It looked better at 1/320th second, as in this shot.

With the naked eye, and the bright(ish!) sky behind it, I couldn't make out any detail in the helicopter. But following my  boosting of the shadows in the photo in Lightroom you can see its code: G-POLA. I Googled this out of interest (I'm not a particular aircraft spotter but do find them mildly fascinating). Seemingly it's a Eurocopter EC135 P2+ (no, that doesn't mean anything in particular to me!) and is now 14 years old. It clearly gets around as I came across a reference to its use in the Birmingham area from 2010-2013. It looks rather grand in its photos here.


(I know my actual photo here isn't very impressive but I thought I'd have a change from my usual Flower Friday entry, much as I enjoy that. And I had fun researching it!)