Aerial Photography over London, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, Northampton

Aerial Photography – Flight Overview

On Friday 27^th January 2012 High Level Photography flew a large aerial photography sortie. The route was from Fairoaks Airport in Surrey (our head office) to the North of England via South East London and back.

As well as the aerial photography commissions on the route we also took the opportunity to gather images for our aerial photography library.

 

Towns and cities overflown

Redhill, London City Airport, Romford, Welwyn Garden City, Hemel Hempstead, Luton Airport, Bletchley, Northampton, Corby, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, Winsford, Worcester, Bracknell.

 

 Sample Photography

Have a look at some of the aerial photography from along our route in the gallery below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Summary of the Aerial Photography Flight

The morning started off very cold (-2 degrees) and the aircraft was covered in a thick layer of frost, plans were made to chemically de-ice the aircraft, a Cessna 172 hired for the day. In the end when the sun started to rise the warmth of the sun gently de-iced the aircraft, also with a little help of some elbow grease!

 

We departed our base at Fairoaks Airport at 9.00am and headed south east towards Redhill in Surrey for the first assignment, after completing this site we headed north towards Romford. On the way we transited over the east of London City Airport and snapped off a few library images with iPhone and camera. We then headed north to our next subject locations.  Luton Airport let us cross over the eastern end of the airport  (see gallery on this page).  After just over 2 hours of flight we landed at Nottingham airport for a pit stop and refuelled both ourselves and the aircraft.

 

Weather, rain, snow and sun

 

We checked the weather for our next photography destinations and it looked OK but with some cloud around.   As we headed towards Sheffield the sun started to hide behind some clouds now and again.  When we headed further north from Sheffield we had to fly through some low cloud that happened to be thick with sleet/snow.  We got through that after a few minutes and at Leeds we saw some intermittent sunshine.

 

Photography Gods

After Leeds onwards towards Manchester. We couldn’t see the centre of Manchester as it was under thick cloud, rain and snow!  As luck would have it our site just to the south of Manchester was in the sunshine.  Then we set course for home via another site and once again flew through thick rain showers en route but back into sun for the next site.  The photography gods were certainly with us on this flight!

 

The final straight home, through sunshine with a final site at Bracknell to photograph,  then back to Fairoaks Airport at about 3.30pm

 

Aerial Photography flight summary

All in all over 5 hours in the air

 

Aerial photography can be great fun and you really do see some great sights whilst flying to and from the subject sites. You get a fantastic perspective of the countryside, towns and cities.

 

Needless to say weather is the enemy for both flying and taking photographs.

 

If you need some photography please call, we are often flying around, in addition to our mast and ground photography.