Our world looks different from above. Aerial photography can provide us with that bird's eye view that we seldom get. Sometimes, from a tall building or a hill overlooking town, we can approximate the view that aerial photography gives us, but it still isn't the same. sometimes you need aerial photography so you can map out a whole area. Aerial photography gives you a real feel for an area. With aerial photography you can look down on even a familiar area and get a whole new perspective. Sometimes, you need that overall view. Some work requires it. When I was a kid, my father worked for the county government and the department he worked for was in charge of vast areas in our state's swampland. Now they needed to manage this swampland and monitor it. So they need aerial photography of the whole area.

Thousands of acres of swampland. Well, of course there wasn't any available, existing aerial photography of these swamps. And this was before the time of satellite views of everything being for sale. Oh, maybe the federal government had aerial photography of everything and satellites watching us all back then already, but they weren't about to admit it and they weren't about to make their aerial photography available to anyone outside of the defense department so my father was on his own when it came to getting some aerial photography of the area.

well, being an enterprising guy and something of an amateur photographer, he figured he could make his own aerial photography of that swampland. so he hired a small plane for the local county airport and he planned to go up and do some aerial photography. The whole plane ride thing sounded like a great adventure to me and my brother so we figured we'd go along for the ride. Everything was great until we arrived at the airport.

We discovered that my father had requested that the pilot remove the passenger side door of the small plane so he could get some good aerial photography work done. so off we flew to get some breathtaking aerial photography. My brother and I strapped in the back, the plane flying, tipped over to it's side, my father hanging out of the airplane snapping away. My brother and I, sure he would fall out at any moment, sure that we would fall out at any moment, all for some aerial photography of some lousy swampland. But, boy oh boy aerial photography can sure be exciting.

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