Image Focus

Every time the Wiltshire Air Ambulance goes on a mission, it costs between £2,000 – £3,000. The crew get called out to attend to life-threatening situations daily. It could be to save people who have severe heart conditions, or a road traffic accident where people need immediate care. The money doesn’t sound like a lot to save a life each time, but it adds up to more than £4 million a year, just to keep that service going.

I began working with the service in 2019 to bring awareness to what they are doing, which in turn helps the charity’s funding. A few months later, the Covid-19 pandemic meant that fundraising events were cancelled, yet the service’s cost increased due to extra protection protocols. The battle they were fighting to keep the service running was now even more challenging.

I spent three days with them in total, documenting the reality of running the service during the pandemic. I stayed on the base with them, sleeping on a camp bed in one of the conference rooms, and would be with them from the morning, through to the night.

Every morning I would need to be weighed, along with my Sony camera kit, so that they could calculate the fuel loads for the aircraft for that day. Whatever I had on me when I was weighed, I would keep on me for the rest of the day because if a call came through, we would have to go immediately. The helicopter is ready to fly within 60 seconds, and within two minutes, you are in the air. As such, I had to have a small, lightweight camera kit I could use at a moment’s notice, so the Sony Alpha 7C was the perfect choice.

This image is of Pilot Costello, shot from the outside, looking through the glass into the operations room. I took it using my Sony Alpha 7C and the FE 50mm f/2.5 G lens. The camera is ideal for this kind of documentary project; it has all the benefits of the other Sony Alpha 7 cameras, with a hi-res full-frame sensor, built-in stabilisation, and it can shoot at 10fps. Impressively, the Eye AF worked through the glass, even with all the reflections – Pilot Costello’s eye is pin-sharp. I had all this power in a small and lightweight body, allowing me to blend in and not get in anyone’s way.

There is almost a double exposure effect as I have the reflection of the HeliMed 2 aircraft in the glass. You can see the concentration on the pilot’s face too – he is intensely focused. We’ve seen similar photos during the pandemic of families only able to communicate and see each through a window, and I feel this image echoes those feelings in a different environment.

As far as I’m aware, I’m the only person in the UK who was allowed this sort of access to an air ambulance service across the entire 22 services in the UK. It was a unique opportunity and such an important one. In 100 years, people will undoubtedly be looking back at images like this; many are becoming part of the National Image Archive. I hope they will provide a record and understanding of the pandemic.