Aerial Photography

Nothing is more fun than going for a flight and grabbing some photographs to document the experience and many pilots use only small inexpensive digital cameras on flights because of safety and ease of use.  The popularity of the digital camera has fundamentally changed how people take pictures and cameras are now built into a variety of electronic devices from smart phones to tablets, my gps even has a camera.

I was recently asked to present a digital photography workshop demonstrating how I shoot images and what processing techniques I use on the resulting photographs.  The major take home lesson from the talk was that images are no longer made in the field but rather afterward, taking pictures in the field is now a matter of  data collection.  This approach is especially useful for photographs taken while flying where quick snapshots are the rule.  If you are not satisfied with your aerial photographs perhaps applying some of these techniques will help make your photographs jump off the screen.  While I do not claim to know what makes an interesting photograph these techniques have helped garer over 500,000 views on images I created and submitted to Google Earth.

I have uploaded a pdf of the workshop power point presentation which shows how to manipulate images and lists all the software resources (free).  The pdf may be found here.

Photo book

Below is a before and after of the same image  where the input levels were slightly decreased, contrast was slightly increased, and unsharp mask was applied. Note the apparent increase in resolution and increase in photographic depth.

Before

After

Low Level Aerial Photographs in Flickriver

The low level aerial photographs are spreading around.  Several non aviation sites have been using some of the photographs, for example a Pakistani music site and a weight loss control site have been reposting some of the photographs, but here are links to several Flickrivers where the low level aerial photographs have appeared.  One of the goals of aerial photography based on the Aerotrekking concept was to demonstrate just what could be done with this sort of aircraft in the hands of a trained pilot and record the unique perspective from these aircraft.  The majority of photographs are under a Creative Commons license allowing non commercial use of the images.  If viewers like the photographs then they should be able to use them, just give credit and a link if  back to either the source or The Sky Gypsies would be appreciated.

Flickriver:  Most interesting photos from Rodeo, New Mexico, United States

Flickriver:  Most interesting photos tagged with iceagelake

Flickriver:  Most interesting photos tagged with lightsportaircraft

Flickriver:  Most interesting photos tagged with dendritic

Flickriver:  Most interesting photos tagged with cavecreekcanyon

Flickriver:  Nathan Craig's favorite photos

and finally,

Flickriver:  BAlvarius's most interesting photos

Historical Marker Update

Received a phone call from the New Mexico state office on historical markers seeking some additional information about the contributor of the submission for the Rodeo Intermediate Field.  The press release is in preparation and hopefully everything will go smoothly at the approval meeting.  They had viewed the intermediate field in  wikimapia and were surprised to learn I had contributed the entry based on research from several of the Intermediate Field Databases.  I pointed out the other online contributions about the bootheel and suggested they have a look at what is being created down here.