Their original brief was to mainly focus on aerial photos of the new clubhouse, new equipment shed, digital scoreboard and fields. Thinking beyond the club’s facilities I set the picture of also capturing higher footage taking in the venue’s location, with it’s proximity to Caloundra town centre, beaches and Pumicestone Passage. The committee members were excited about this prospect and were eagerly awaited the results.

They ideally wanted the aerials done on a specific date, just after line marking of the fields and before the first match of the season, which was only a 24 hr window. It is often difficult to carry out an operation on a specific date, mainly due to the weather (rain, cloudy days, strong winds etc. particularly through the summer). So flexibility is a key in this business as we all want that spectacular shot on a perfect day. The weather leading up to the day was very ordinary, even a couple of days out. However favour was upon us as it was a beautiful day on the Sunshine Coast.

As with any operation we need to be mindful of privacy, whats around us as well as what may enter our operating area. In this case we had a school to the north, swimming pool complex to the east and Caloundra airfield to the south west. These were all taken into consideration when determining our flight paths. Within 3nm of an airfield we are in radio contact with other air traffic and due to the proximity to the airfield we only flew to 300ft or 91m (max. height is 400ft or 122m) which was ample to capture Caloundra and the passage.

The result: another great day in paradise and the club committee were very please with the outcome.