Scene

Shot a short video on my camera phone today: an air ambulance helicopter taking off from the play-park adjacent to my office's car park. Even from inside the ofiice, we'd heard the chopper go over very low earlier (you could feel the vibration in the pit of your stomach), and, after circling, the pilot put the helicopter down in the park, blowing leaves and wood pigeons out of the trees.

An hour or so later, sitting in my car reading under the shadow of the trees, I heard the whine of the helicopter's engine as it started to turn the main rotor. I jumped out of the car and started to film the preparations for flight, finding a gap in the hedge where I could get a vantage point. One of the crew stood on the grass making hand signals to the pilot,then climbed in just before the different pitch of the tail rotor joined the sound of the main rotor. The chopper wobbled into the air, rose slowly, and the rotor's down-draught sent a gust of dust and gravel across the grass, spattering my face. I kept filming as the hedge's branches flapped around in the rotor wash, and the helicopter disappeared into the overhead sun and tree branches.

"That was exciting," I thought, thinking about how I cold trim the video and post it online somewhere.

And then started to think about the context. Why would an air ambulance touch down next to a housing estate - perfectly accessible by road - unless there were some dire medical emergency that potentially required the patient's rapid carriage to a hospital? And what could have happened that meant that the helicopter was there for more than an hour? Pessimistically, I reasoned that the patient's need for urgency must have disappeared - presumably through their death.

At that point, I realised that my excitement at the spectacle of the powerful machine preparing to fly had taken me completely out of the reality of the moment: I was more concerned to try and get a shot and to capture the visual spectacle than to engage with what the reality of the moment might be.

And it struck me how natural, how *unthinking*, this instinct to 'take the picture' has become for me: always looking for the 'shot' rather than seeing the landscape; always thinking about what this scene will look like back on the computer, and how I can crop it - rather than actually drinking in the actual experience that I'm having...rather than being present. 

I don't like this. Always being somewhere else mentally; seeing the moment as if from outside, through a visualised distance of time and medium. And - especially - losing sight of the fact that there was probably someone's tragedy at the heart of this moment. I have become a cold bastard.