Aerial photography and video in Teignmouth

Teignmouth's front is a long, straight run of Georgian and Regency terraces facing the Channel, backed by Victorian villas climbing the slope behind. From above, that gradient does work a ground shot cannot: the terraces stack in ranks toward the sea, the pier sits at the foot of the town, and the beach and promenade read as one continuous line rather than a series of separate views.

Turn the camera inland and the composition changes completely. The Teign narrows into a working estuary here, with fishing boats and moorings crowded below the town and the passenger ferry crossing to Shaldon on the far bank. Across the water, the Ness rises as a block of red sandstone cliff, a landmark that recurs constantly in local marketing because there is nothing else on this stretch of coast quite like it.

Not every part of Teignmouth trades on the view. Behind the historic core, post-war housing spreads out at Broadmeadow and along the Bishopsteignton road, ordinary family streets set well back from the sea. An aerial shot here serves a more practical brief than a scenic one, showing a whole street or a development plot clearly rather than selling a coastal outlook that these particular houses simply don't have.

Estate agents selling the Georgian and Regency stock on the front, or the villas on the slopes above, are selling a view as much as a property, and an aerial image is the only way to show a buyer how a house sits relative to the sea, the pier and the estuary mouth without three separate photographs. The same applies to the seafront apartment conversions, where the selling point is often the angle of the sea rather than the size of the rooms.

The working harbour brings a different client altogether: boatyards, sailing and moorings businesses, and anyone marketing the town's maritime side needs an image that ties the moored boats, the quay and the estuary into one composition, something no ground photograph manages from a single fixed spot. Wedding and events venues around the estuary and the Shaldon side of the river also use the crossing itself, the ferry, the bridge and the water between the two settlements, as part of their pitch.

Because Teignmouth and Shaldon sit either side of the same estuary mouth, a single flight can cover a Georgian resort front and a red sandstone headland village without repositioning far. That is unusual on this coast, where most towns offer one dominant view rather than two contrasting ones, and it means a developer or agent with interests on both banks can commission one shoot rather than two. Two very different crossings frame the estuary in the same shot: the road bridge further upstream at Shaldon, and the passenger ferry that still runs the short water crossing closer to the harbour mouth.

Tide state changes the estuary shot more than most: at low water the sandbanks and the channel edge are exposed and the moorings sit on mud, while a high tide fills the whole estuary and the ferry crossing reads as open water. Bookings here are planned around the tide table as much as the weather, since the two states photograph as different places.