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I did this a couple of years ago and it was surprisingly effective and inexpensive. I rented a plane and pilot and took along a camera with a variety of lenses.
The first thing the pilot did was take the door off on the passenger side. For once in my life I tighened up the ole seat belt! It was kinda scary at first, but it really allowed me to take some clear and unimpeded photographs. But the first time I said to the pilot that I wanted to get a shot of an area directly below us I got a little shock. Instead of circling around to put the aircraft into a different position, the pilot simply banked the plane hard right so that what a moment before was below me was now directly in front of me. I tightened by belt even tighter at that point! LOL
We took shots from about 1500 to 2000 feet and in retrospect I wish I had been slightly higher for some shots and slightly lower for others. To get a good overview of the area, I should have had the guy take us up another 1000 feet. But to get the particulars of some key spots I would like to have been down around 1200 to 1000 feet.
I paid $140 an hour and the whole thing took less than two hours. The last time I took my own aerial photos I was hunting on public land so there was no one to share the cost with. Now that I'm in a club I plan on offering my photos for a small sum in order to help me defray the costs.
I really enjoyed both the fight and the subsequent hours of analyzing the approximately 100 photos I took. You can spend hundreds of manhours scouting on the ground, but til you've seen it from the air - you don't really know the property.
The first thing the pilot did was take the door off on the passenger side. For once in my life I tighened up the ole seat belt! It was kinda scary at first, but it really allowed me to take some clear and unimpeded photographs. But the first time I said to the pilot that I wanted to get a shot of an area directly below us I got a little shock. Instead of circling around to put the aircraft into a different position, the pilot simply banked the plane hard right so that what a moment before was below me was now directly in front of me. I tightened by belt even tighter at that point! LOL
We took shots from about 1500 to 2000 feet and in retrospect I wish I had been slightly higher for some shots and slightly lower for others. To get a good overview of the area, I should have had the guy take us up another 1000 feet. But to get the particulars of some key spots I would like to have been down around 1200 to 1000 feet.
I paid $140 an hour and the whole thing took less than two hours. The last time I took my own aerial photos I was hunting on public land so there was no one to share the cost with. Now that I'm in a club I plan on offering my photos for a small sum in order to help me defray the costs.
I really enjoyed both the fight and the subsequent hours of analyzing the approximately 100 photos I took. You can spend hundreds of manhours scouting on the ground, but til you've seen it from the air - you don't really know the property.
