#aerial photography
Aerial view of a suburban low-cost housing development, Mexico. Jorge Taboada, from his series Alta Densidad.
Post link
In 1924, Colonel J. (John) Victor Dallin (1897-1991) founded the Dallin Aerial Surveys Company. Dallin was a Royal Flying Corps-trained pilot who served in World War One; in the latter stages of the war, he was sent on aerial photography service for reconnaissance missions.
After the war, in 1919, he put that experience to use when joined Bishop and Barker, a firm which did some aerial survey work. In the 1920s, he worked at the Philadelphia Aero Service Corporation, which operated a flying school in South Philadelphia. In 1924, he left to establish his own company and started Dallin Aerial Surveys as a single proprietorship.
Dallin Aerial Surveys produced photographs like this image of Center City Philadelphia, featuring City Hall, which was taken at 5:40 A.M. on June 24, 1934. Its clients included newspapers, businesses, municipalities, and private individuals, who contracted with the company for aerial images of factories, private estates, schools, country clubs, towns, airports, rivers, and newsworthy sites and events.
During its years of operation, the company produced not only oblique photographs of various sites for commercial purposes, but did a considerable amount of aerial photogrammerty (aerial mapping of a city, specifically the city of Philadelphia). In order to carry out his work, Dallin designed several specialized cameras and mounters. A camera used for film negatives in the 1930s had a thirty inch lens so that high vertical views could be made without flying excessively low over urban areas.
The Dallin Aerial Surveys Company closed in 1941, reportedly because he rejoined the armed services for WWII. Today, the company’s photographs live at Hagley Library in our collection of Dallin Aerial Survey Company photographs (Accession 1970.200). Our Digital Archive also more than 7,800 images from the Dallin Aerial Survey Company collection. The majority of the photographs concentrate on the Mid-Atlantic region covering a period from 1924 to 1939. To view the digital collection online now, just click here. To learn more about the Dallin Company and the collection, visit our online exhibit A Bird’s Eye View of the Delaware Valley: The Photography of the Dallin Aerial Survey Company
Post link
The distant sounds of the Call To Prayer rang out across the steely waters of Lake Skadar, crackling out through distorted speakers atop the minarets of several mosques, clashing and vying for dominance like the howling of street dogs. The sky was reflected in the glassy lake surface as it turned slowly from blue to purple to an electrifying red which set the clouds ablaze. And we were making our preparations to head deep into the mountains.
We’d been parked up amongst the waterlogged trees and lake reeds for several days, a furtive little spot accessible by driving through a shallow river that had swollen to twice its size following the rainfall on the day we arrived. But now the blissful sunset colours cast down onto the distant mountains of Montenegro and all was calm in the far North of Albania again.
Of all the lakes we’d camped by in recent months, Lake Skadar was easily the largest and most impressive.⠀
While we’d stuck religiously to our inland route around the Balkan Peninsula these lakes gave us some comfort and a gentle reminder of the ocean’s edge we’d left behind in search of provincial adventures. Although we’d grown up a stone’s throw from the sea and these country’s coastlines provided an easily navigable and scenic route, we’d been drawn to see more of Europe’s hinterlands, a world away from glitzy seaside resorts and tourist attractions. In the heartlands of Albania we’d discovered spectacular mountainscapes, empty lands, impassable roads and an authenticity, warmth and unrivalled hospitality from its people. The same was true of the Balkans’ whole interior, and in fact we’d only briefly touched the sea in Thessaloniki since our departure from Calais many months prior.
These lesser-visited areas are what we live for; places you won’t find in any guidebook, unblemished of tourist attractions. Just raw and honest countryside, nothing more.⠀
We finished packing up our backpacks just as the last of the light was fading, ready for our journey tomorrow into the most remote corner of this country. ⠀
⠀
Alone in the wild.⠀
⠀
We can never truly be alone, no matter how remote we go in our van. Because if we can drive it, someone else can too.⠀
But still we like to find these hidden crevices, areas of land with no purpose and no reason to visit them. We like to tuck ourselves so far out of the way we might not see another person for days, for reasons we can’t explain.⠀
It’s difficult to put into words, my desire to meet people and hear their stories in every corner of the world we go, and the yearning to conceal ourselves away like some childish game of hide and seek, except no one’s going to come looking.⠀
I can’t explain it, but I find solace in knowing I’m not the only one.⠀
In a particular chapter of a very well-known book Jon Krakauer finds himself climbing to the top of an Alaskan mountain so remote it hasn’t seen a visitor in years, risking his life in the snow, all in the name of solitude. The lengths he would go to to escape humankind, and the loneliness that struck him once he was back amongst them- that story sticks in my mind, always.⠀
Some may find unabounded silence and space unnerving, the knowledge that if something goes wrong you’re stuck out here. But we relish in it, the what if’s outweighed by the bliss of isolation. The possibility that maybe, just maybe, not one person has ever camped in this spot before and we might be the first.⠀
The solitude quells our minds as much as it unnerves them, but still the excitement of adventure keeps us pushing onwards into evermore distant corners of the earth.⠀
P.S. Can anyone name the book?
