A Little Lesson in Aerial Photography

Our friend Jim Richardson, in his blog, has a nice account of taking this picture, and of planning aerial photographs in general. Jim's blog takes pictures mostly from his work for National Geographic and tries to give a down to earth, nuts-and-bolts look at how they were made.

"The latest," he writes, "is about an aerial photograph of wheat harvest for our 'Great Plains' story, in which I go into considerable detail about the rigors of aerial photography from a small plane. It also emphasizes the importance of capturing moments (even from the air) by studiously predicting when they are going to happen. It's not a romantic view of photography, just what you have to do to make it happen."

Mike
(Thanks to Jim)

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Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford: "When I was in high school I would take aerial photos of crops on my family's farm. We would take the doors off of a Citabria and I'd take pictures out the door. Between the placement of the doors and the struts and me in the backseat and 120mph of wind buffeting me, the pictures sucked for any other purpose than seeing how the center of the sunflower field was doing. In retrospect I think it was all just an excuse to go flying with the doors off the plane. I hadn't thought of that in years, and now I can distinctly remember the smell of avgas and the farm."

Featured Comment by Hikari: "I had once the chance of taking photos from the window of a small plane and got sick after 30 min. smelling the gasoline and looking through the viewfinder. From that day I really appreciate the work of these kind of photographers."

Featured Comment by Tim F: "Tip from someone who has done this all of once: do not ask the pilot to fly as low as he can if you only have one pass. I was looking up at telephone poles."

Featured Comment by Jim Richardson: "Any discussion of aerial photographers would be incomplete without giving full credit and fawning admiration for my own aerial hero, Georg Gerster. Long before Yann Arthus-Bertrand took the world by storm Gerster was showing us what art aerial photography could be. He has built up an enormous body of work of simply stunning images.

"Once, years ago, I had the honor of working with him, when we were doing the 'Day in the Life of America' and I was one of the assigning editors. Georg Gerster was assigned to me and I remember sitting there asking him what he wanted to do. Simply and professional he said, 'I want to do what you need done.'

"Quite a guy, and not a bad photographer."

Comments

[charlie d]

I like that.

[Gijs Langelaan]

dear Mike et al.,

In addition to this aerial photographer, may I recommend the work of William Garnet. I have a copy of his book and he was (and perhaps still is?) an exceptional photographer with an eye for the abstract. His sand dunes are sensual, the ice on a lake bed could be a small town, a farmer's random plow patterns a painting by Miro...

regards

Gijs

[Gijs Langelaan]

Mike,

Addendum to my last post: I have found a link on Amazon for William Garnett's book:
http://www.amazon.com/William-Garnett-Aerial-Photographs/dp/0520083482#

And here is a short obituary from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/obituaries/09garnett.html

regards

Gijs

[Christopher Perez]

Wonderful article! For me this underscores the value of being well disciplined in one's approach. It feels like so many photographic "artists" leave far too much to chance, so they can, perhaps, "get in the flow" and be more "arty". Some of the finest work (in all art disciplines) were planned with clear forethought as to the desired/required outcome.

[Kerry Glasier]

Ahhh, aerial photos. I've always had a 'thing' about them. Yes Garnet was one of the masters, however John S Shelton remains one of my all time top guys, see his 'Geology Illustrated', poor printing but now and again someone will put one of his images well printed in a magazine, he was a teacher and took aerial shots for his class. For sheer quality Brad Washburn remains unbeatable, his technique and eye combined to great effect.

[Tim F]

Tip from someone who has done this all of once: do not ask the pilot to fly as low as he can if you only have one pass. I was looking up at telephone poles.

[Bron Janulis]

Very impressive work, and a good explanation of the how. His "Heartland" photos are great. That part of Kansas, Flint Hills, is really beautiful. (I have family near Wamego)

Like Hikari, the hour I spent shooting out the window of a small plane, didn't lead to cleaning the plane, but I do have an aversion to small planes. At least I got paid for it.

[CP]

We do aerial photography a couple of times since we do mapping of geologic features. It's really hard work peeking through a K10D viewfinder placed on the floor of the plane (a nomad military plane) at 7500 feet for 90kms one-way. We also had to sync the shots manually to obtain stereo photos. The worst is when a tail wind shakes the small 7-sear plane up-down and sideways!

[erlik]

"It also emphasizes the importance of capturing moments (even from the air) by studiously predicting when they are going to happen."

This is a terrific tip for photography in general. Predict. Do not rely on your burst mode to pull you out of a tight spot.

I tried aerial photography once and the scum of our pilot in a little Cessna didn't want to open the window behind him. He could have, but he didn't want to. So all the photos came out blurry from the scratched Persplex. Some of them can serve as "art", though. :-)

In his favour, that was the smoothest landing I've experienced. And on a lumpish meadow at that. Better than a commercial jet on flat tarmac.

[karamanoğlu]

Brad Washburn was the guest speaker at the Randolph Mountain Club annual meeting shortly after one of his last books was published. One of the questions in the Q&A concerned his technique. As Brad said, "Pretty simple, I leave the lens wide-open in order to get the highest possible shutter speed." Much of his aerial work involved using a Fairchild aerial camera which was about as big as he was.

[john robison]

Growing up in rural Indiana we more than once had a pilot/photographer come by the house selling aerial photos of our house, barn, and other out buildings. Sometimes when they showed up you'd remember a couple of weeks back a light plane circling the house and then moving on to the next farm down the road. The proofs were always B&W and the finished photo, usually anywhere from 8X10 to 16X20 was hand colored. You got real nice green grass in the yard that way. Fall scenes with all the colored leaves on the trees were popular too. These guys just shot the photos on speculation hoping owners would buy a nice enlargement. Many of them did, you saw a lot of these aerials when you would visit friends and relatives around the county.

[hugh crawford]

Oh two other things,

If anyone offers you a hot air balloon ride, take it because there is no better platform for taking photos straight down, and check out what the Kite Arial Photography people are doing.

[Ken Tanaka]

Aerial photography...with a pilot. How old-school quaint. See this video in PDN.

Seriously, though, Jim's is beautiful work. His blog piece may even understate the complexity and effort that go into capturing even a single successful image, based on what I've seen of such work.

Renowned photographer, and friend, Terry Evans has been using aerial photography to document man's impact on the prairie landscape, and the Chicago area's expansion, since 1978 using mainly medium format film cameras. This slight-sized grandma dynamo has probably logged more air hours than an Air Force pilot. (She's now working on documenting the remaining steelworks in Indiana.)

[declan]

Would you go to this extreme to keep your aerial photo business afloat ?
http://poorhousephotos.com/lvnmz.html

Regards,
Declan

[Jeffrey Goggin]

If you find yourself hooked on aerial photography and don't mind shooting film, then check out some of Peter Gowland's specialized aerial cameras, especially his 8 lb. 8x10 creation (about halfway down the page):

http://www.petergowland.com/camera/