Bryce Canyon Helicopters launched as the only operator running helicopter tours over Bryce Canyon National Park, with three tour products spanning the introductory flight to the full park highlights tour. They brought me on for the full brand launch covering stills, video, web copy, and the visual kit that would carry the launch across every channel they were touching. We shot one day in February, air-to-air and ground positions both, in conditions that ran cold and windy enough to teach us something on the fly.
We learned fast that two doors open on the chase helicopter was not going to work. The draft made the camera impossible to hold steady. One door open, the aircraft repositioned every time the angle changed, and my hands stayed numb for most of the flight. Aerial tour photography in winter trades comfort for the kind of light and air clarity you cannot get any other time of year. The brief asked for full creative control. I was given full creative control.
The final delivery covered eighty stills and one website header video, plus the website copy I drafted to sit alongside the imagery. The work shipped to billboards, social, paid ads, print, and the website itself, which is to say everywhere the brand was going to live. Aviation tourism photography for a brand-new operator carries a specific weight.
The first impression a customer gets of a helicopter tour company is the imagery, because the experience itself does not exist yet to recommend itself. Get the photography wrong and the customer books with the operator who got it right. The Bryce Canyon Helicopters launch had to look like the only flight worth taking. That was the brief I worked to.
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