Unless you are terrified of flying, there is no reason that you should not offer aerial photography service to your clients.

When planning your aerial photo shoot you’ll need to make the decision between a fixed wing aircraft (plane) and a rotary wing aircraft (helicopter). Your budget may well make this decision for you since planes are much less expensive to rent than helicopters. My favorite plane for aerial photography is the Cessna 172. In southwestern Ontario and the U.S. Midwest I usually pay in the area of $150 per hour for the plane and pilot. The 172 has it’s wing over top of the cabin (a necessity!) and with the window fully opened (do not try shooting through the glass!) you have a fairly unobstructed view for shooting.

Since you will not get good photos shooting through glass, be sure that the window will open all of the way before you leave the ground. The Cessna has a bracket on the window that allows it to open only a couple of inches. Removing a small screw from the bracket will allow the window to open all the way, but this must be done before take-off. Be aware that the wing, wing strut and landing gear can all end up in the photo when using very wide lenses. Even though a plane cannot legally fly as low as a helicopter, with an experienced pilot this is a very good and safe way of shooting aerial photographs.

I love helicopters but I’m not a fan of  small 2-seat helicopters for aerial photography. These small machines are at their maximum capacity with 2 people on board and flying at maximum capacity leaves very little room for error. The larger 4-seat helicopters such as the Bell Jet Ranger or Robinson R44 are at approximately half capacity with two people on board. This provides surplus power making it much easier for your pilot to recover from problems or errors.

I usually have to pay at least $1200 per hour for one of these machines with pilot, but when shooting from the back seat of an R44 (or Jet Ranger) with the door removed and a good, experienced pilot at the controls, I can produce far more and better photos in much less time than is possible from a plane.

I recently did a two-hour shoot over the Detroit River from an R44. We had a long shot list of photos that needed to be done in full sun between 8:30am and 10:30am. To attempt this shoot from a plane would have required several days of morning photo-flights.

I like to bring two DSLR camera bodies; one with a super wide zoom and the other with a mid-range zoom. I use a polarizer on the mid-range zoom, a skylight filter on the super-wide and camera straps on both bodies. I almost never use long lenses when shooting from the air as movement and vibration are magnified by their use. Using two camera bodies avoids the possibility of dropping something in (or from) the aircraft while changing lenses. And airtime is expensive! You need to spend your time shooting, not changing lenses and digging through a camera bag.

There is a lot of planning that needs to go into an aerial photo-shoot; aircraft and pilot availability, site orientation relative to the sun, weather conditions and your equipment. Be sure to bring everything that you will need, but nothing more.

Don’t forget to check on conditions at the site you’ll be shooting. Make sure that the property is cleaned up. Do you want parking lots empty or filled with cars? Is there equipment or machinery on the property that should not be there? Any of these could cause an expensive re-shoot.

If you have properly planned your photo-flight you should have a good time and come back with some great photographs.  For me personally, few things are as much fun as hanging out of a helicopter taking photographs on a beautiful morning.

http://www.claytonstudio.com      Follow me on Twitter

Detroit River

Bob-Lo Island