I've been pretty busy lately as you may have guessed. Lots of portraits and some multimedia work to break things up a bit. I got referred to do a gig for a local non-profit who is trying to protect a large piece of land that is near the foothills of the Rockies from development. Turns out that a neighboring city is pushing to get it made into an industrial park under the auspices that the area around it is already industrial so it's not going to be either an eyesore or out of place. They have already been getting multinational investment for the project. My job was to do aerial photos of the proposed site to show the city that it is not developed and not a good idea to spoil.
I love aerial photography as it makes everything look differently than you are used to perceiving it. Before the flight the pilot, the rep from the org and I talked about
our flight path, what we were going to try to photograph and how we
were going to do that. Things like altitude, angle to the areas and
such essentially means my camera position.
We were in a Cessna 182 which is a great platform for this kind of work. The wing is over the cabin so I have a pretty unobstructed view and it has large windows that pop up so that I don't have to worry about the glass being dirty or effecting the clarity of my images. We found that with 3 of us in the plane the rear seat was my best position.
When we got to the sight we found that it was just as was suggested: nothing around it but open space. The developers story that their project was going to be butted against other industrial sites was hogwash.
To make things worse they have been building a service road with intersections so that they could fall back on a "but we already have the infrastructure … you can't pull the plug now!" argument. From what I was told this road hadn't been approved by the city yet so it was kinda the first evidence that it exists like that.
The flight was pretty short and we got what I was told was exactly what they needed to put the brakes on this project that would have serious negative environmental and economic impact on the area. Yeah, the power of photos!
So on the way back I took some pix for me because I could and frankly should.
Fun stuff! It is such a blast to be in those small planes. I helped a friend out one time and did this, and it was my first time in a plane (period), and I will never forget it.
Sounds like a great cause, too – – glad you guys busted ’em.
Peter