The world from above

For most of history man had to imagine what the world was like from a bird’s point of view. He could climb a mountain and look down on his village in the valley below, but he was still effectively earthbound. Then he learned to fly and his perspective on his world changed forever.

Developing aerial photography

It was a French balloonist called Gaspard-Felix Tournachon who decided to combine the relatively recent science of photography with the technology pioneered by the Montgolfier Brothers over half a century before, and took the world’s first aerial photographs over Paris in 1858. Unfortunately his pioneering efforts have not survived, but nevertheless he pointed the way forward.

How aerial photography gives you a totally different view of a location is now over 150 years after Tournachon’s groundbreaking flight, readily apparent. Such photographs have been taken from aircraft, helicopters, unmanned drones, rockets, kites and parachutes. Thanks to the refinement of remote controlled craft such as multi-rotor helicopters we can even obtain photographs of places where large manned aircraft are prohibited, such as at low altitudes over population centres.

Uses of aerial photography

Today aerial photography is used in a wide variety of fields, such as cartography, engineering, geology, archaeology, environmental studies and even in such relatively down-to-earth matters as resolving boundary disputes. Some aspects of landscape do not become fully apparent until viewed from above. A prime example of

this would be the Nazca markings of southern Peru. These lines in the desert were created by a now extinct race between 400 and 650 AD and show various huge geometrical patterns and even depictions of animals. On the ground these shapes simply cannot be discerned. It wasn’t until we could fly over them that their full beauty was realised and then could be captured on film for everyone to appreciate.

Aerial photography can be divided into two main categories, vertical and oblique views. Vertical photographs look straight down on a scene and are often taken with the sun overhead so there are fewer shadows on the land, removing perspective to a large degree and turning landscape into a series of patterns which are almost two dimensional in appearance. Such an approach is useful in cartography and is known as a map view. Oblique photographs have a slightly more creative dimension. Taken at an angle and with the sun lower in the sky creating shadows, they incorporate perspective to give an impression of scale and size. This is a landscape view.

Both methods of aerial photography serve to show us our world in a new way. We see the patterns of topographical features which form a landscape and the way in which mankind has altered the earth according to his own requirements. Cities which can seem a confusing jumble when viewed from the ground take on a clarity and their own special kind of beauty when seen from above. Perhaps most importantly, aerial photographs can show how small we truly are in the grand scheme of things.

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