Fugro-BKS (formerly BKS Surveys) has signed up as a content provider to Bluesky’s online collection of historically important aerial photographs. Visitors to www.oldaerialphotos.com will now be able to search through thousands of additional unique aerial images from the 1950’s onwards including many complete UK county surveys. The Fugro-BKS images available from OldAerialPhotos also include a significant amount of project specific photographs covering sites in Cornwall, Hampshire, Norfolk, Grampian, Tyne and Wear and Merseyside.

“BKS is a well known and highly respected name in the aerial survey sector and we are therefore delighted that they have come on board as content providers for the OldAerialPhotos website,” commented James Eddy, Technical Director of Bluesky. “This agreement with Fugro-BKS will further enhance the visitors’ experience providing access to an unprecedented million plus historically important images.”

“OldAerialPhotos provides a window on the past revealing towns and cities as they have developed over the past fifty plus years,” commented Mervyn Adams, Production Manager of Fugro-BKS. “The addition of our back collection of imagery to the archive will further enhance the potential for historic research and local area studies.”

Fugro-BKS (formerly BKS Surveys) was established in 1956 in Leatherhead, Surrey. The founding shareholders, J.W.Barnby, M.Keegan and R.W. Stevens, gave the company its initials B.K.S. and the company’s main businesses were aerial photography and topographical surveys. In 1965, Fugro-BKS expanded its operation through new offices in Coleraine, Northern Ireland, and in 1967, the Leatherhead production facility was transferred to an enlarged Coleraine unit. In April 2008 BKS joined the Fugro group; based in Holland Fugro has more than 300 operating companies worldwide, providing a range of geotechnical survey and geoscience services.

Visitors to www.oldaerialphotos.com can search through more than a million aerial photos dating back as far as 1917 by simply entering a postcode, address or grid reference. Detailed search results, including the age and ground coverage, of every image that matches the search criteria are displayed and the visitor can choose to purchase either a hard copy print or digital image file.

Photos that are available to purchase from www.oldaerialphotos.com include some of the earliest commercial aerial survey images, military photography from World War II and many national archives. Offering a record of most major UK cities and towns, transport and utility infrastructure and commercial property developments, the images are an invaluable resource for anyone with a personal or professional interest in local studies, genealogy, boundary disputes, environmental land use research or town planning.

Bluesky has signed a reseller agreement with Landmark, Britain’s leading supplier of land and property search information. The deal will see the UK’s largest collection of historically important commercial aerial photographs being made available through the Envirocheck website further helping professional users to make informed decisions based on comprehensive environmental site assessment information. The million plus photographs, from Bluesky’s Old Aerial Photos archive, date back as far as 1917 and include some of the earliest commercial survey images, military photography and many national archives.

Envirocheck.co.uk brings together the best environmental information and digital mapping in one simple to use package. Delivering details of contaminated land, pollution, flooding and flood prevention schemes, landfill sites, hazardous substances, geological features and industrial or sensitive land uses, the basic Envirocheck report includes Data Sheets, Site Sensitivity Maps and Historical site plans.

The Old Aerial Photos images will be offered on the Envirocheck website as a value added service and registered users can select images from detailed search results, including the age and ground coverage of every image that matches the search criteria, with the file supplied as a digital image.

“Although often quoted it is none the less true ‘a picture (really does) paint a thousand words’ so the addition of the Old Aerial Photos to the Envirocheck solution will really help uncover and bring to life potentially important environmental information,” commented David Mole, Managing Director of Landmark Environment.

Rachel Tidmarsh, Managing Director of Bluesky commented, “This is an important agreement for the future development and preservation of the archive. Landmark is a leader in the field of land and property search information and the interest they can generate will be used to further enhance the collection.”

Old Aerial Photos that are available to purchase from Envirocheck.co.uk include some of the earliest commercial aerial survey images, military photography from World War II and many national archives. Offering a record of most major UK cities and towns, transport and utility infrastructure and commercial property developments, the images are an invaluable resource for anyone with a personal or professional interest in local studies, genealogy, boundary disputes, environmental land use research or town planning.

Aerial photography specialist Bluesky has acquired the UK’s largest collection of commercial aerial survey photographs and will be making it available online. Following an agreement between Bluesky and Blom Aerofilms, photographs dating from the 1950s, held on about 7,000 original films, will be available to purchase from www.oldaerialphotos.com.

Many of the images have not previously been available to purchase online. These were captured by some of the most prestigious names in the UK aerial survey industry, including Fairey, Huntings, Simmons, Clyde and Engineering Surveys – all part of Blom Aerofilms’s UK heritage. The agreement also covers the housing and management of the original films at Bluesky’s dedicated film archive facility.

Visitors to http://www.oldaerialphotos.com can already search through nearly a million aerial photos dating back to the early part of the last century by simply entering a postcode, address or grid reference. Detailed search results, including the age and ground coverage of every photo that matches the search criteria are displayed and the visitor can choose to purchase either a hard copy print or digital image file.

The enormous task of processing the films and transferring information about the imagery to the online search engine will take place at Bluesky’s image processing facility in Coalville, Leicestershire.  This is likely to take quite some time.

For Blom Aerofilms, these images represent a 90-year history of the company as one of Europe’s leading specialists in aerial imagery, plotting work undertaken over many years for local authorities, public bodies and commercial organisations across the UK and beyond.  “It’s a unique and specialist collection, and we hope that many people with both a commercial and personal interest will find it as valuable and informative as we have,” commented Gavin Lewis, Sales and Marketing Director at Blom Aerofilms.

“Anyone with an interest in the UK aerial survey will have heard of the above companies and will be excited by the fact that the photos, for the first time ever, will now be available online,” commented David Drabble, Archive Manager at Bluesky. “For those less familiar with the industry it is probably more significant that these historically important photos are being added to what is already the UK’s largest online collection of aerial photography, making oldaerialphotos.com a one stop shop for anyone with a personal or professional interest in the past.”

Photos that are already available to purchase from oldaerialphotos.com include some of the earliest commercial aerial survey images and military photography from World War II and many national archives, including oblique aerial photographs. Offering a record of most major UK cities and towns, transport and utility infrastructure and commercial property developments, oldaerialphotos.com is an invaluable resource for anyone with a personal or professional interest in boundary disputes, local studies, genealogy, environmental land use research or town planning.

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About Bluesky

Bluesky is a UK-based specialist in aerial imaging and remote sensing data collection and processing.  An internationally recognised leader with projects extending around the globe, Bluesky is proud to work with prestigious organisations such as Google, the BBC and Government Agencies. Bluesky has unrivalled expertise in the creation of seamless, digital aerial photography, 3D landscape/cityscape visualisations and prints and also runs a national mapping centre, providing digital mapping, satellite imagery and aerial photography including ultra-high resolution imagery of cities and towns.

www.bluesky-world.com

About Blom Aerofilms

BLOM Aerofilms Ltd is part of the BLOM group, Europe’s leading provider of aerial photography and digital mapping solutions for civil engineering design, environmental assessment and land information management. Blom employs more than 1,100 staff in twelve offices and production units across Europe. The company provides a complete range of mapping services including aerial photography, GIS base mapping, orthophoto production, geo-spatial solutions and airborne laser-scanning. Recent developments include BlomUrbex, an off-the-shelf library of high resolution oblique imagery integrated with a powerful measuring tool. 

www.blomaerofilms.com

Aerial survey company Bluesky has created three historically important aerial photomaps for the newly formed local councils in Cheshire. Using original films dating back to the early eighties, Bluesky has scanned, georeferenced and mosaiced nearly three thousand individual photographs to create the three high resolution, digital aerial datasets for use within the Councils’ geographical information system (GIS) and possible future use via the respective councils’ websites.

“When planning for the present and the future any authority needs to consider and understand the value of the past, especially the last ten to twenty years, and the value of temporal information held within historic datasets such as aerial photographs,” commented David Matthews, GIS Officer of Cheshire Shared Services. “Like many authorities we held older county wide aerial surveys in hard copy format stored in filing cabinets. Although consulted by a few specialist staff the real potential of the imagery could only be tapped if the images were converted to a digital format.”

The newly created digital datasets are being made available across the two Councils, Cheshire – West & Chester Council and Cheshire East Council – giving staff access to five different epochs of aerial imagery spanning more than sixty years.

Applications of the aerial photographic maps will include archaeological assessments of potential development sites and research by highways to investigate changes in the line and width of the highway to determine, for example, the extent of the highway that is maintainable at the public expense. It is hoped the imagery will also be put to use in public rights of way, land regeneration, enforcement, planning, contaminated land, change detection and legal applications.

The images will also be made available for purchase by members of the public, either directly from the Councils or from Bluesky’s online map shop (www.oldaerialphotos.com), for use in boundary disputes, planning applications and local area studies.

Croydon Council has taken delivery of an historic photomap providing a snapshot of the South London borough shortly after the end of WWII. Created by aerial survey company Bluesky, the image database is produced from original aerial photographs captured by the RAF in the late 1940’s. Consisting of more than 300 unique images that have been scanned and georeferenced to create a seamless, digital, map accurate database, the Bluesky photomap will be used by various Council teams to support decision making with Building Control, Planning and the Pollution service, being initial users.  

The historic Bluesky photomap was created from more than 300 original aerial photographs, captured by the RAF between the period 1946 to 1948 as part of an effort to update the then out of date 1930’s Ordnance Survey maps and chart the reconstruction of post war Britain. Each image was scanned using high-end scanning machines, (Vexcel Ultrascan 5000 Photogrammetric Flatbed Scanners), to create digital image files which have high geometric accuracy and image quality. The images were georeferenced and mosaiced together to enable a seamless, map accurate image database.

“The post war period is significant for many reasons,” commented Les Haines, Survey and Mapping Officer at Croydon Council. “Like other parts of London, Croydon experienced considerable bomb damage during the war and this is evident in the Bluesky photomap. In addition July 1948 is an important date, as the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act came into effect, introducing the concept of Planning Permission and forming the foundation of modern planning policy. Consequently Planners still need, on occasion to establish what was on site at this time.”

Croydon Council has already introduced the Bluesky photomap within their Building Control division, in fact within days of taking delivery the image database was used to clarify issues being experienced on a site in Norbury. “The site developer and Building Control Officer were having trouble excavating the footings and were unable to find solid ground,” continued Les. “The house appeared to be pre-war, however a quick look at the Bluesky imagery showed in fact a derelict site, following bomb damage, proving the dwelling had been faithfully reconstructed on a foundation of rubble. Our World War Two bomb map had either not marked this incident or recorded the location incorrectly.”    

Bluesky is a UK-based specialist in aerial imaging and remote sensing data collection and processing.  An internationally recognised leader with projects expanding around the globe, Bluesky has unrivalled expertise in the creation of seamless, digital aerial photography, 3D landscape/cityscape visualisations, and 3D prints.  Bluesky also runs a national mapping centre, providing digital maps, site plans, satellite imagery, aerial photography and ultra-high resolution imagery of cities and towns.

Aerial survey specialist, Bluesky, has launched a brand new web service offering an online window to the largest collection of UK based historical aerial photographs. Visitors to www.oldaerialphotos.com can search through millions of aerial images dating back as far as the 1940s by simply entering a postcode, address or grid reference. Detailed search results, including the age and ground coverage, of every image that matches the search criteria are displayed and the visitor can choose to purchase either a hard copy print or digital image file. www.oldaerialphotos.com is a joint venture between Bluesky and air to ground oblique photography experts Skyscan.

“This is an important development for anyone with a personal or professional interest in the past,” said Rachel Tidmarsh, Managing Director of Bluesky. “By giving visitors to www.oldaerialphotos.com the ability to search through literally millions of images with just a few clicks of a mouse we are bringing together for the first time a valuable and comprehensive record of our past. Many of these images have previously only been available to archivists or those with specialist knowledge of how to find them, now it will be easy for everyone to search through these historic collections.”

Visitors to www.oldaerialphotos.com can search through a number of historically significant collections of both vertical and oblique aerial photography. Through an ambitious and ongoing acquisition programme and agreements with a number of historically important private, commercial and government organisations Bluesky has already secured, and will continue to do so, unrivalled access to a photographic record of the country’s past. Bluesky’s own team of photographic experts have collated and formatted information about every image creating a Master Aerial Database that powers the online service.

Images that are available to purchase from www.oldaerialphotos.com include some of the earliest commercial aerial survey images, military photography from World War II and one of the largest collections of oblique photography in the UK. Offering a record of most major UK cities and towns, transport and utility infrastructure and commercial property developments www.oldaerialphotos.com is an invaluable resource for anyone with a personal or professional interest in local studies, genealogy, boundary disputes, environmental land use research or town planning, for example.

www.oldaerialphotos.com is a joint venture between aerial imaging, remote sensing data collection and processing specialist Bluesky, and air to ground oblique photography experts Skyscan.

Aerial mapping company Bluesky is the supplier of choice of aerial photography in Cumbria. Four out of the six district councils are already using Bluesky supplied GeoPerspectives imagery and five out of six have placed orders for new survey to be flown this summer. In addition to the District Councils, Bluesky has also supplied high-resolution aerial datasets to Cumbria County Council, the Lake District National Park Authority and Cumbria Wildlife. The aerial photography is being used widely across Cumbria providing real world detail at the desktop, across corporate-wide intranet geographical information systems (GIS).

Allerdale Borough Council is one of Cumbrian Council’s gaining benefits from the aerial imagery. Currently accessed by users of their desktop GIS and available to every user of the Council’s IT network via their intranet mapping service the 2008 imagery will also be posted on the Council’s mapping portal where users can search by an address or postcode and locate local amenities, places of interest and Council services.

“The aerial photography provides real world detail at the desktop facilitating informed decision making,” said Steve Evans, GIS Officer, “and, by working in partnership with other districts to procure this valuable resource we have been able to achieve significant cost savings and have a consistent information base across the County.”

Julia Jackson, GIS Officer at Copeland District Council added “The Bluesky imagery is an important resource for frontline staff. The imagery helps contact centre staff locate problems as they are reported, for example fly tipping or graffiti, allowing service delivery staff to concentrate on resolving the issue. The Bluesky imagery has also attracted considerable interest from partner organisations such as the police. By plotting incidents against the photo background we can pinpoint hotspots and even identify contributing factors.”

“Aerial photography offers a time stamped record of land use, urban development and the general environment,” said Robert Stapleton, GIS Manager at Carlisle City Council. “This is invaluable for Planning Enforcement and has also been used by our Tree Officer as proof of illegal hedgerow removal. The 2008 imagery will further enhance our monitoring of change as not only can we analyse differences between the two datasets we can also continue to compare with field records.”

GeoPerspectives is a joint venture between BlueSky and Infoterra providing national coverage of orthorectified aerial photography, digital terrain & surface models for 3D modelling, and colour infra-red imagery for vegetation analysis.

Bluesky International Limited in conjunction with Skyscan, have launched a website which allows users to search a database of over a million old and historical aerial photos of the UK, dating back to the 1940s, and the days of WW2 (World War 2). The website at www.oldaerialphotos.com brings together the main vertical aerial photography archives in the UK.

Users simply enter a postcode or address and is then offered a user friendly map interface to select their area of interest.  Once the map is centered the website then searches the archive database for that area and returns the positions of all of the historical photos available in the archive.  The user can see the footprint of each photo (the approximate area it covers on the ground) select and purchase either a scan or a print, with prices from £35.  There is a money back guarantee and secure payment through WorldPay.

The site has already had tens of thousands of visitors and the number is growing daily. The main use for the historical photographs is for boundary disputes, legal purposes, genealogy, local history and general interest, including gift items.  There is also a fascinating History of Aerial Photography on the site, which shows just how aerial photos have evolved over the last 140 years.

New aerial photo archives are regularly being added, so bookmark the site, and keep checking!  Remember – it is free to search www.oldaerialphotos.com.