Spent an hour or so earlier this year flying just for fun with a friend of mine who is busy ‘hour building’ his way to a helicopter rating, hopefully complete with shiny Jetranger at some point in the future. “Hour Building” is helicopter speak for the following:

Stand watching the fuel truck dials spin around as it fills up – punish credit card – climb in – start up – go burn it all – return – shut down – coffee – debrief. Rinse and repeat.

All the while, with his instructor calmly imparting his vast experience as he climbs the learning curve.
Though it was a lovely day, mild with blue skies overhead and fluffy clouds, it was not a great one for aerial photography. The shots I did take, though, will prove useful as they are a great illustration for clients about how weather affects aerial photography.

Often, I’ll get a call on a day similar to yesterday, “It’s a great day here, why aren’t you up shooting our project?” But what can seem like a lovely late winter / early spring day on the floor, can be lousy at 1,000 feet. It’s often caused by something called an inversion layer, which is a change in temperature at height. This leads to haze, pollution and sometimes fog being trapped close to the ground. Stand on the ground and look vertically upwards, you won’t see it. But try and rest your gaze on something horizontally in the distance and you’ll begin to see it. Take that to 1,000 feet and look down and it’s like soup. This shot taken on Canon’s excellent 70-200 telephoto would normally be superb, but the haze effect is magnified if anything. It’s always an interesting phenomenon to see, especially if you climb above it and look down, but not great for aerial shooting.

Does that mean that a day like that is a write-off? Not always. As you can see from the second shot here, swapping out to a 17-40 Canon wide angle and shooting closer in, the haze is still there, but the close in subject is not affected by it. Not fantastic and the type of conditions where you’d only use it for technical reference, but a usable image for that purpose nonetheless.

Move on to this third image, of the same location but taken just a few seconds later as we banked around at 90 degrees to the sun. If we’d had the door removed and been shooting this subject for real, we’d have had a good photograph of this industrial area. So at certain angles and with certain views in mind, the subject still works. On a wide angle lens and shooting more vertically, we’d have been able to photograph this area quite happily.

I’ll be writing more about the weather and how it affects our decisions on aerial photography again soon. If you want to be kept informed, sign up for our email newsletter, or bookmark this blog.