Aerial Photography of Downtown Toronto

One of my first good views after take-off.

Readers of my sporadic blog posts may recall my writing of a somewhat disastrous attempt to capture shots of downtown Toronto from a  helicopter a few years ago. (https://khollinrake.blogspot.com/2016/11/ill-fated-attempt-at-aerial-photo-of.html) They were shot on spec for a regular client of mine who had a repeated need for images of the city featuring the CN Tower. One year later, same project, same potential requirements, I arranged on my own again (on spec again) to get up into the sky. This time I booked a flight on a Cessna 172 with Island Flight School and Charters. They have pilots working on accumulating their hours who will fly you around at least somewhat per your instructions for a designated period of time, in my case just over half an hour.

Getting ready for take-off.

Of course one of my must haves was an opening window through which I'd be able to shoot. The window is hinged at the top; once you tip it up and open, the force of the air keeps it in place. Funny story: many years ago I'd gone up in a small plane to take some pictures and I allowed the front of my lens to pass through the window out into the air flow. The gelatin filter I had mounted in front of that lens blew off and away so fast I learned my first hard lesson almost as soon as we were airborne. This time, I knew not to stick the lens out of the window and to keep it inside just shy of the external wall of air.

Facing northwest.

Our flight path consisted of repeated circles over downtown with the goal of capturing a variety of angles that included the CN Tower. Weather was, inevitably, an issue. I partly lucked out and partly did not. The great news was that the sun was shining and cloud cover was limited. Puffy white clouds tend to enhance blue skies, and dappled light can be much more interesting than straight sun, depending on the ratio of clouds to clear sky and where the dapple falls. But dappled light created by moving clouds constitutes a very hit and miss proposition, which can be frustrating. If I'd had the budget to keep flying it might have been less so.

Facing south-southeast.

Each go around the pilot varied his altitude so I could capture slightly different views. All the while I was painfully aware of the creeping and gradually increasing cloud cover. I was also aware that thanks to this being a very short session the light would be coming from one direction for the whole shoot. This meant that the city would look more dramatic from some points of view than others -- sometimes the light would be raking across the buildings creating highlights on one side and shadows on the other, accentuating their shapes and textures (ie. more drama), whereas from other angles the sun would be shining straight down on axis with the camera (direct light), or even from behind (back light). Only when the sun was obscured by cloud did the drama really disappear, though, leaving the city looking flat and me disappointed.

Fairly flat light as the sun goes behind a cloud.

Because the annual report for which I was ostensibly shooting always included a focus on communities, I made sure to include a few neighbourhood views. I did not love this particular dapple (and the client didn't choose this image anyway), but I still like the shot.

A section of Toronto neighbourhoods.

At this point the light looked pretty flat, again, but it's still fun to see Church Street and Jarvis Street from somewhere other than in traffic.

Facing north showing Church St. to the left and Jarvis St. to the right.

Nearing the end of the flight the sun poked out again but there were big clouds in the sky causing dark shaded areas...bigger than I would have ordered. This shot is similar to the one at the top of this post but from a slightly higher angle showing more of north Toronto in the distance:

Similar shot to the one at the top of this post, but the plane was higher.

One of the last shots as the sky continued to cloud over and my flight budget ran out:

Given an actual budget I would have loved to have more time to wait for the clouds to move around some more, although they were obscuring more and more of the blue, and the sun, so returning another day might have worked better. In the end the client chose only one of these aerials for the project. But it was fun way to get some cool shots, which I now have to  share and license as I wish. So if you'd like to see more from this shoot and/or you would like to license one, or you'd like to send me up to get you some fresh images, please e-mail or call me. 

Thanks for reading!

kathryn@hollinrake.com
hollinrake.com