Ireland From Above

The extraordinary world of ariel photography

I’m usually up at 6.30am. I live in Glandore, west Cork, overlooking the sea. It’s very peaceful. I like it in winter, because there is hardly anybody here. For breakfast, I normally have cereal and toast. I listen to the radio — Morning Ireland would be a big favourite of mine. Then I buy the papers when I go out.

I’m an aerial photographer. In the days leading up to a flight, I might have eight companies looking for work to be done. I do a variety of aerial shots from various levels for different people. I work for architects, the council, and for both Dublin Port and Cork Port. The everyday stuff would be work I do for builders, auctioneers, engineers and estate agents. Then, after those jobs are done, I go fishing; well, that’s what I call it. As I’m up there, I might as well do some other photos. I store those pictures for a future book, and that’s how my new book came about. It’s called Cork from the Air. It’s just been published. I self-published, because I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny. I also did another one — Dublin from the Air.

Thirteen years ago, I was an auctioneer. That had been my job for 35 years. But at the same time, I always had a great love of flying. I had some flying lessons, but I never progressed very much. I started taking pictures from the air as a hobby, but then the property market collapsed. My income was down 60pc as an agent, so it was a case of needs must.

A well-known aerial photographer from Cork retired, and there was a bit of a vacuum. He was always giving me advice, so I decided that I’d try it.

In the first three years, I didn’t make a hell of a lot, but I kept at it and it kept growing. I had a lot of friends and colleagues in the auctioneering business, and they were very supportive of me. For a while, I was doing both auctioneering and aerial photography. Then more photographic work started to come in, and that was that. When you start taking good pictures, you start attracting responses. People of all ages like aerial photographs. You see children poring over the pages, looking at where they live.

When I get all the jobs that I have to do, I phone the Atlantic flight centre in Cork. They have a special section that does photography. I brief the pilot about what I want to do. Then we check the forecast three days beforehand. The weather can be the killer. If the weather is bad, we can’t go out, because all my stuff is low level. And the position of the sun is terribly important, too. We do all of our flying within the regulatory frame of the Irish Aviation Authority. You’ve got to talk to air traffic control and let them know where you are going. You go out with a great sense of trepidation, hoping that you’ll get it right. Usually we go up in a Cessna 172 plane, but other times I use a helicopter. You are burning juice at a huge rate. On average, I’m up in the sky for two hours, but there have been times when I’ve been up for five hours.

If I’m using a helicopter, we take the door off. You are certified to do that. I put on a harness, lean out and take the shots. But if it’s in the Cessna plane, you pull up the window. It’s kind of like a canopy that goes up in a chipper van. Once you get up to 50 miles an hour, the window gently stays up in the breeze. You don’t have to lean completely out, because the pilot does the work for you. Sometimes you’re flying sideways. I’ve flown hundreds of hours with the same pilots, and we work well together. I did Croke Park the day of the All-Ireland final between Dublin and Mayo. It was a windy day and it was raining, but we saw the gaps in the clouds, when the rain was going to be at its least. We got magic pictures that day.

Everything happens very fast, and it’s very intense. It’s a hostile environment up there. One of the big problems with taking aerial photographs is that you are moving. You are doing 100km an hour, and then everything vibrates on a plane. Everything should be blurry, but the modern Canon lens is fairly specialised. I have taken shots in turbulence and you wouldn’t even think that there is a wind out there.

With this Cork book, I wanted it to be different to any aerial photographs I’ve ever seen. The only way to do that was by bringing people into it. The higher you go, the fewer humans you can see. In a built-up area like Dublin or Cork, you cannot fly below 14,000 feet, which is about a quarter of a mile. The modern lenses are not super intrusive, but you could actually make out whether a person is a male or female by what they are wearing, and their height.

I took a photo of the Cork City

“I’ve taken shots in turbulence and you wouldn’t even think that there is a wind out there”

Marathon in the first 10 minutes, when all the runners were bunched up together going over the Christy Ring bridge. Another day, I saw a small lobster boat and a fisherman in old-fashioned oilskins. He was baiting the pots, and there were hundreds of gulls scavenging. I waited until the gulls were at him like mad. In these photos, you don’t see the people’s faces, but you know that they are there. I’ve got a shot of the shoppers on Patrick Street and the shadows they are creating.

I love what I’m doing now. After a day taking photos, I go for a long walk to clear my head. Then I go home and I read. I’m a voracious reader. By the time I go to bed, the images are running through my head. When I think about the ones I was lucky enough to get, there’s a great feeling of satisfaction.