This was an interesting job at Cambridge Design Partnership near Cambridge, commissioned by Harvey Norman Architects. To fill temporary demand for office accommodation 10 shipping containers and a tensioned fabric roof were used to create a suite of meeting rooms with an atrium canteen. The whole installation was all squeezed into an existing courtyard.

We used conventional still photography and low level drone photography to document the project. This kind of scheme really demonstrates the benefit of the drone photography as showing the scale and fit of the installation from the ground would be almost impossible. 

Container Offices,Cambridge Design, Toft - architectural photographyDetails
Temporary shipping container office accommodation with tensioned fabric atrium/canteen. Constructed within existing courtyard at Cambridge Design, Toft, Cambridgeshire.

Commissioned
Harvey Norman Associates.

Terms
Image copyright, all rights reserved, contact Andrew Hatfield for licensing options. Atrium Cambridge Design, Toft - architectural photographyDetails
Temporary tensioned fabric atrium/canteen. Constructed within existing courtyard at Cambridge Design, Toft, Cambridgeshire.

Commissioned
Harvey Norman Associates.

Terms
Image copyright, all rights reserved, contact Andrew Hatfield for licensing options. Entrance, Cambridge Design, Toft - architectural photographyDetails
Main entrance of hipping container office accommodation.Cambridge Design, Toft, Cambridgeshire.

Commissioned
Harvey Norman Associates.

Terms
Image copyright, all rights reserved, contact Andrew Hatfield for licensing options. Cambridge Design, Toft - architectural photographyDetails
Altenative view of the entrance. Cambridge Design, Toft, Cambridgeshire.

Commissioned
Harvey Norman Associates.

Terms
Image copyright, all rights reserved, contact Andrew Hatfield for licensing options. Cambridge Design, Toft - architectural photographyDetails
Establishing shot of temporary shipping container office accommodation. Cambridge Design, Toft, Cambridgeshire.

Commissioned
Harvey Norman Associates.

Terms
Image copyright, all rights reserved, contact Andrew Hatfield for licensing options.
 

The import of DJI drone footage into Premier Pro has always worked without any issue for me, until recently. I shot some drone footage on the 16th June 2020 and the footage would not import and I got an error saying the files were damaged. This was the case with all the files and a bit worrying after a days filming.

The only thing I could thing of that had changed was the introduction of hardware rendering in Premier Pro.

I turned off GPU rendering and then found the files would import as usual without an issue and that GPU rendering could be turned on after import, also all the files now import without issue whether GPU rendering is enabled or not.

I was in Basel for a few days just before it was all locked down due to the Coronavirus. I did manage to visit a few interesting sites though. If you have an interest in Modernist and High Tech architecture the city is well worth a visit when things return to normal. If you like the work of Herzog & de Meuron you will find about 35 of their projects spread across the city centre. The Vitra Campus is also very interesting featuring the work of a veriety of architects spread out across the campus and production areas.

I didn't have time to use all of my architectural photography gear so had to do with my pocket Panasonic GX80 with the 12-32 pancake lens.

Roche Tower at night also showing the partially constructed second tower, Herzog & de Meuron (2020)

Roche Tower from south of Rhine, Herzog & de Meuron

Roche Tower East elevation from street level, Herzog & de Meuron (2020)

Vitrahaus, Vitra Campus, Herzog & de Meuron (2010)

Vitra Design Museum, Vitra Campus, Frank Gehry (1989)

Fire Station, Vitra Campus, Zaha Hadid (1993)

Fire Station, Vitra Campus, Zaha Hadid (1993)

Fire Station, Vitra Campus, Zaha Hadid (1993)

Vitra Slide Tower, Vitra Campus, Carsten Holler (2014)

Factory Building, Vitra Campus, Nicholas Grimshaw (1983)

I have had regular commissions from Ingleton Wood over the past 10 years and it was great to be asked to photograph there new offices at 10 Alie Street in White Chapel. The whole design and implementation of the project was handled by staff from the London office. Running the project and the relocation was no doubt helped by the fact it was just a short walk across the street from there old offices at 1 Alie Street.

meeting room, alie st. London - interior photography booths, alie st. London - interior photography staff lockers, alie st. London - interior photography break out area, alie st. London - interior photography terrace room, alie st. London - interior photography

This was an interesting project to photograph for DW Windsor and was one of the first projects arising from the City of London’s Lighting Vision. The scheme has lots of benefits in terms of centralised control and reduced energy consumption but from a photographic point of view the benefits were  improved night views of St. Paul's cathedral and replacement of the blanket lighting with localised lighting using illuminated hand rails. Shorter light columns have also been used to reduce the visual intrusion as you walk up St. Peters Hill. This really draws your eye to the cathedral but provides plenty of light where it's needed. They have also gone for a much more traditional colour temperature of 2700K which seems to add to the character of the location. It's usual practice with photography to correct the colour temperature to give a more neutral colours. Although in this instance the client wanted to show how the lighting maintained the heritage look and warmth of the lighting.

There are lots of things to be considered when planning commercial drone flights. The main aspects are identifying and mitigating safety risks, considering intrusions of privacy and the effects on other air users. These factors normally have a negative impact on what you can photograph and how you can photograph it. With that in mind it was a real pleasure to photograph this limestone extraction at a quarry in Derbyshire. The location was well away from other properties and the only people on the shoot were safely enclosed in huge plant. It's nice to have the freedom of knowing your 2kg drone isn't going to damage a 60 Tonne excavator and you can get as close as you like to the work.

I have recently been out photographing submissions for the Brick Design Awards 2019. The first scheme below is a new 6 storey student accommodation building in Hunter Street Chester. The building was photographed in the late afternoon to provide good contrast and show off the detailing on the South elevation. The project has been shortlisted in the Medium Housing Development category.

The second scheme is a housing development at Kings Hill, West Malling. Photographed on a clear day giving good contrast to show of the detail accurate exposures were needed to make sure all the detail was retained in the light brickwork. The project has been shortlisted in the Large Housing Development category.

I have recently update my drone show reel, watch it in full 4K on youtube.

The video features,

Holdenby House, Northamptonshire

The Moller Centre, Cambridge

Franklins Gardens, Northampton

Elekta, Crawley

Unite Student accommodation, Durham

Centurion Golf Course, St. Albans

Imperial Tabaco, Southampton

INEOS Transatlantic Racing HQ, Portsmouth 

Tile Mountain, Stoke on Trent

Here are a few shots from a night shoot in Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire. The brief was to document an new car park lighting scheme which has recently been awarded the Good Lighting’ award by the Commission for Dark Skies  and received a 5 star rating by Lux magazine. The shoot was made up of conventional still photography and drone shots. The drone shots were used to show off the scheme as a whole and demonstrate how well the light distribution was controlled. The shoot was commissioned by UK lighting manufacturer DW Windsor. Just be aware you do need additional permission from the CAA for commercial drone flights at night.  

Drone filming and architectural photography at INEOS HQ, Portsmouth

This was really interesting combined drone video and architectural photography shoot at the INEOS sailing teams HQ in Portsmouth. The work was commissioned by Prism Architectural from Mildenhall who designed and manufactured the glazed facades to the main building and feature stairwell. The drone was used to get close to the façade while still allowing the building to be shown in context, these type of shots emphasis the fact that the creation of narrative and the use of strong composition are just as important when using a drone or conventional ground based camera. 

It was great project to document and using the drone really made the shoot, although having to fly round the aggressive seagulls and deal with the radio interference from the adjacent Isle of White ferry made it a bit stressful. 

Urban drone film shoots like these take a lot of planning and co-ordination to make sure risks are minimised and all the conditions laid down by the CAA are adhered to. Thanks to INEOS for their help and particularly Sarah Alexander for making it all happen.

Nice to see that One Angel Square in Northampton was a winner in the RIBA East Midlands Award 2018. Congratulations to BDP and Consarc. 

It was great to revisit this completed project in 2017 after being commissioned back in 2013 to take the original images used for the design competition visualisations. 

AH8_0493

This project is located at Cornerstone in Crawley, a redevelopment project within the Air Traffic Zone of London Gatwick Airport. With the weight of drone that I use it would be legal to fly within this area without the permission of Gatwick Airport Air Traffic Control, although I didn't feel this would be very wise. I approached LGA and applied for their own Permit for the Operation of UAV's. This was fairly straight forward although they requested that I reduce my maximum operating height from the usual 130m down to 50m. This wasn't a problem for me as the images I like to capture are generally lower than this showing off the building elevations rather the plan.

The second part of the project was still photography of the exterior and the spectacular interior space.

looking west above the moller centre cambridge - aerial photographyexample of commercial drone photography and video in cambridgeshire

I’ve recently completed all the various steps to obtain CAA permission to operate a drone or UAV in CAA speak on a commercial basis. When I was looking in to the process in spring 2017 I found it difficult to find all the stages I would need to go through to actually receive the paperwork from the CAA. This is not an exhaustive guide to the route merely my view as a architectural photographer and video maker wanting to extend their services to offer clients aerial imagery. At the start of the process I had little experience with remote control models and no experience with the usual quad rotor drones.

After a number of enquiries from existing clients wanting aerial imagery I decided to begin the process of obtaining the relevant CAA permission to operate. The first thing I found was that I would need some training to prove to the CAA I was competent to operate a drone. There are loads of companies offering training and assessment services on the web but the CAA publishes a list of approved training organisations. 

I contacted a few of the companies on the CAA list and picked Cambridge UAV Academy because they were very efficient when answering my queries, they ran regular monthly courses, offered free retests and they were fairly local. They weren’t the cheapest but the cheaper firms would have required greater travel costs, hotel accommodation and some didn’t offer free retests which I thought I might need.

Around the middle of March I booked onto Cambridge UAV’s  2^nd/3^rd May course, at the same time and after a fair bit of research I purchased a DJI Phantom 4 Pro and a Seyma X5. When you come to take your flight test you need to show that you have at least 2 hours flight time on the drone you are being tested on. Having never flown a drone I was a bit reluctant to risk the £1500 Phantom 4 at the start so would practice on the £35 Seyma X5 toy drone in the evenings before using the Phantom at the weekends. It took me about 10 hours on the Seyma before I could get to grips with the control reversal you need to use when the drone is coming towards you.

When the course came round I joined about 20 other people at Cambridge UAV’s offices in Godmanchester and was treated to  2 full days of classroom lectures on Air Law, Meteorology, Flight planning etc. all fairly boring stuff but the instructor Alan Perrin shared enough anecdotes and real world scenarios to keep it all interesting. There was an exam on the afternoon of the second day and everyone passed.

Once you have passed the exam, have at least 2 hours flight time on type and obtained commercial drone insurance you can take the flight test. I was lucky in that I had said to Cambridge UAV that I could be flexible on dates for the flight test, this combined with a run of decent weather meant that I was able to take and pass the flight test on the 10^th of May. It could easily take a couple of weeks to get a test if the weather isn’t great.

With the exam and flight test in the bag I then had to complete a Commercial Operations Manual outlining how I was going to apply the theoretical knowledge gained on the course to my real world drone operations. Covering everything from pre-flight assessment, risk assessments, drone maintenance, record keeping etc.  The idea being this is a bespoke document written to support a specific operation and a typical manual is about 60 pages long. In my case there were a couple of ways of creating this, the first was to produce the document from scratch and then forward it to Cambridge UAV for proofing and editing before CAA submission. The second option was to use Cambridge UAV’s Ops. Manual writing service, where they take your specific details and modify their template accordingly to produce your bespoke manual. Although this isn’t a free service it will save you a considerable amount of time and effort. I went for the Ops. manual writing service and soon received my draft manual from Ca

All of the above had to be submitted via email in pdf format. When I submitted it I didn’t receive any form of receipt. The CAA advise they can take up to 28 working days to process the application. I received my permission via email on the 12^th of June 2017 one month after submission without any issues. This permission is valid for 12 months.

Another thing that is a bit difficult to identify at the start of the process is how much it is going to cost. In my case I have spent the following.

I hope that’s of use to anyone contemplating applying for permission to operate a drone commercially. There is a lot more information on the CAA site and it’s worth checking on there regularly as guidance and the regulations appear to be changing constantly.

Get in touch if you would like any Architectural aerial video or stills work throughout the UK but particularly in Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire.  

Renewal Process

It has been nearly a year now since I was granted my PfCO and I have just  renewed my permission with the CAA.

• Operations Manual with any revisions, completed update log, signed and dated
• Form SRG1320 requesting renewal and providing payment details
• Evidence of your insurance cover

The fee for a renewal and initial applications has recently increased,  as of 01/04/18 it is £243.   

You can apply for renewal up to 90 days before the expiry of your existing permission, I applied on 12/04/18 and had the new permission granted on 30/04/18. I took the renewal opportunity to apply for variation as well and have added a Night Rating to my existing permission, all detailed in my revised Ops Manual.  A separate variation to the PfCO would cost £243 and require submission of the same documents as the renewal.

General Observations

Here are a few of my observations regarding the commercial operation of a drone in the UK from a photographers perspective which you should consider when working out your business case.

In addition to the above original set up costs I have had to purchase 6 additional batteries and an additional charger to allow me to fly uninterrupted for half a day. Typical cost of Phantom 4 Pro batteries is about £160ea.

If you place a high importance on the quality of imagery you need to working in good light with some level of direct sunlight. Good light with low winds can be a bit difficult to forecast and days with both seem fairly infrequent requiring flexible clients and lots of rebooking.

Lots of time can be wasted in looking at the feasibility of flights, quoting work and rebooking flights and you should consider how you are going to account for those costs.

Drone technology is developing very rapidly at the moment, features and performance are going up while the cost is coming down. The cycle of significant drone upgrades and releases appears to be around  18 months. As a result you should consider the repayment of any capital investment over much shorter periods than normal camera equipment.   

mbridge UAV. It needed a couple of hours modification but I was able to submit it to the CAA on the 12^th on May. When I submitted my application to the CAA  I used form SRG1320 and include the following,

• Operations Manual including a photo of my UAV
• Copies of my remote pilots qualifications from Cambridge UAV
• Evidence of at least 2 hours flight time in the preceding 3 months
• Copy of my commercial flight insurance
• Payment notification form FCS1500