If you are investing time and money into creating an aerial photograph of your farm, you want it to look as beautiful as possible. Luckily, there are multiple ways to ensure your shots look great. When preparing for your aerial photography session, keep the following tips in mind:

1. Choose your time carefully

When selecting a time for your aerial farm photography session, you need to think carefully about how your farm looks at various times of the year. Ideally, you should pick a time between when your crops start sprouting and when you harvest them, and you should avoid times when your fields are just fallow soil.

You also need to think about the time of day. Talk with your photographer about the pros and cons of the beautiful contrasts and shadows created at sunset and the clarity created at midday. In most cases, you want to avoid times between these two periods of the day. Particularly, when the sun is low on the horizon, it can create glare in your shots.

2. Talk to the photographer about weather conditions and rescheduling

Although you can control the time of year and the time of day when your shots are taken, you have limited control over the weather. There are advantages to both sunny and cloudy days. Namely, sunny days help to create bright shots, but cloudy days tend to have more balanced light.

If you have a clear preference over which type of weather you want, you may want to work some scheduling flexibility into your photo shoot contract. Talk with your photographer about how firm your scheduled time is, and if you need flexibility, consider hiring a photographer who can provide you with that. If the photographer has to rent a plane or helicopter, he or she may not be able to reschedule unless there are really severe weather conditions that make it impossible to fly. However, if the photographer owns his or her own plane or plans to use a drone to take the shots, he or she may be able to flexible about rescheduling the farm photo shoot based on the presence or absence of clouds.

3. Tidy up your farm

Before you take your aerial shots, make sure you tidy up your farm. To get a sense of what is visible on your farm, take a look at a few other aerial photography shots and see how much ground detail they show. Then, tidy up your farm accordingly. Put away toys, wagons, bicycles or other relatively large clutter, but don't worry about small imperfections like uneven patio stones that won't show up in the photographs anyway. Remember to close shed and barn doors, and if you don't want people in your shots, notify your family and farmhands that you want them offsite or inside during the photo shoot.

4. Consider how things look from a bird's eye view

When you are tidying your farm, you see everything at your own height. However, you need to remember to think about how things look from a bird's eye view. How do the top of your buildings look? Are they missing roofing tiles or covered in bird poo? If so, consider sending someone up there with a pressure washer and cleaning those areas as well.

If you don't have the money to reroof your buildings, but they are looking knackered, consider applying a coat of paint. You can purchase special roof paint that works on everything from asphalt shingles to metal roofs.

If you want to create visual contrasts in your picture, paint your roof a colour that contrasts with the surrounding landscape. For example, if you are taking your photos when your canola fields are full of yellow flowers, you may want to consider blue roof paint. If you are taking your photos when your fields are green, contrast that with red or orange paint.  

5. Hire a skilled aerial photographer

There are many things you can do to improve your aerial farm shots, but ultimately, much of the success or failure of your photography session lies in the hands of the photographer. Choose your photographer carefully. Look for a professional who has a proven record of taking beautiful aerial farm shots, and listen to his or her advice regarding the best weather conditions and other critical elements related to the photo shoot.

For more information, contact a company like 3D Mapping Solutions.