As you can tell from the timestamp, this was a whopping 28 seconds after take-off. We were already clearing the airport and manoeuvring before heading to the coastline then northwards.

The original shot was incredibly hazy, but bear in mind that I was shooting through the helicopter's windows which would have done nothing for clarity. I was sitting in the back left seat, and there is no way that I could have shot out the front without getting the windshield frame in the shot. I therefore suspect that we were pointed east toward the coast with me shooting out of the side window. I've cleaned the living heck out of the contrast and brightness, which makes it look... less bad.

It was just coming up to 3pm on a winter's day so the sun was descending to the west (left), lighting a lot of the buildings from that direction. This is less bad than it would have been had we been flying at midday, but still a long way shy of the best possible time. The sun had some colour (albeit a sickly, weak one) and some direction to pick out the building walls, but nothing memorable.

There are a lot of places here that are echoes of my time in Sydney. The twin white buildings on the left were, back in my salad days, the headquarters of Thomas Nationwide Transport, later TNT Ltd. They were a clear marker standing above Redfern station as we rattled through, me on my way to study and/or my earliest civilian jobs. TNT was a plaything in the mergers and acquisitions jungle of the 80's and 90's and in 1997 it was taken over by a Dutch postal company. They had probably vacated the buildings by the time this shot was taken, but the buildings were still offices. About 10 years after this shot (2016), the towers started to be converted into apartment blocks.

Beyond that is the cold, windswept brownish tower of what is now the University of Technology Sydney, once upon a time the Sydney Institute of Technology. You would not get that view these days because another UTS building has been built on the side of the road nearest to us, which would block your view of that tower.

The two towers to the right and a little closer to us I haven't identified, but I believe them to be (up market) apartments. The three buildings near the centre of the image are a different story, being (I believe) Housing Commission (public housing) buildings which have turned into pits of despair over the decades. One of them was subject to complete lockdown during the pandemic, with little provision made for people to get food and groceries.

Looking into the distance and a little more to the right again, the tallest structure is Centrepoint Tower which has a restaurant (that I've been to) and an observation deck (which I haven't) on top. It's more formally known as Sydney Tower these days, but that building and I go back a ways and I tend to use its old name. Apparently it's still the tallest structure in Sydney, but not the tallest building since it is really a series of observation decks above a tower.

Behind that is what was then known as the MLC Centre, a 228 metre (748'), 67 storey octagonal building. MLC was an investment, insurance and superannuation company which was bought out by the National Australia Bank over 20 years ago (in 2000), and in 2021 the current owners Dexus decided to drop the MLC Centre name in favour of the address, 25 Martin Place.

Needless to say, after 50 years nobody cares what Dexus calls it, and everyone still uses the MLC Centre name.