Who turns up
A construction background, then a 100 megapixel camera pointed at what actually sells
Why this ended up being the job
The background is construction rather than photography, which turns out to matter for a different reason than it does on the survey side of the business. Knowing how a property or a site actually reads from ground level, what a viewer is trying to picture when they look at a listing, or what a venue needs a shot to prove, is the difference between a set of pretty aerial pictures and one that does the job it was booked for.
The camera does most of the technical work. A 100 megapixel sensor and a stabilised gimbal remove most of the reasons an aerial photograph used to look amateur, blur, noise, a wonky horizon. What is left to get right is composition, timing and light, and that is where the flying has to be planned rather than improvised on the day.
The work grew out of Hembury Contracting, a Devon contracting business, and the drone side of it started as roof surveys. Photography followed because the same aircraft, flown with the same care, produces images good enough to sell a property or a place, not just document a defect.
Everything is flown from Exeter, which puts most of Devon inside an hour. The South West is the patch because it is home, and because knowing a town well enough to know what is worth shooting there is not something a national firm sending someone down for the day can match.
On the record
Registrations, kit and cover
CAA registered
Operator ID and Flyer ID held, plus the A2 Certificate of Competency. Every flight is planned to the rules that apply to the site, and the paperwork is available before the visit if your agent, venue or planning team wants it.
100 megapixel camera
A DJI Mavic 4 Pro with a Hasselblad camera and 6K video. The resolution is what lets a still be cropped hard for a brochure detail shot and still hold together on a large screen or in print.
Edited and licensed
Images are colour graded and cropped before delivery, not sent raw off the card. Every set comes with a licence for your own use, so you are not paying again to put the photograph in a listing or a campaign.
Insured with Coverdrone
Full commercial cover for the operation. Certificates go to agents, venues and marketing teams as a matter of course, without anyone having to chase for them.
DJI Mavic 4 Pro
100 megapixel Hasselblad camera and 6K video. Resolution good enough to crop hard into a single frame for a brochure detail shot and still hold together on a large screen or in print.
DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced
640 by 512 radiometric thermal camera alongside the visual one, kept for the survey side of the business. Not part of a photography booking, listed here because it is on the same operating certificate.
How we work
Three things this business will not do
Oversell a flat shoot
Wrong light produces flat, forgettable images regardless of how good the camera is. Rather than hand over something that will not do the job, the flight moves to a time or a day that will.
Hand over unedited files
What lands in your inbox is graded, cropped and selected, not the raw output off the card. Editing is part of the booking, not an optional extra charged separately.
Fly a job that will not work
Wrong wind, wrong light, wrong airspace: the shoot moves. Charging for imagery that cannot carry a listing or a campaign would be worse than rescheduling.
See what is included
Get a quote with Aerial Photography Exeter
Tell us what you need photographed, where and when. Sam Hembury will come back with a fixed price and the next available slot.