Amelia Earhart once stated: "You haven't seen a tree until you've seen its shadow from the sky". Tabb Firchau, who has grown up with a Pilot dad, understood Amelia's sentence really early in his life and made a philosophy, a lifestyle and a commerce out of it. The Earth from the sky, with its beauties, its symmetries, its otherwise hidden treasures, its poeticism is the common tread within Tabb's works, which could see the light thanks to another factor: Tabb's easiness to experiment, tinker and dare. Requested all around the world for virtual aerial tour, the photographer has either an ever expanding portfolio of 360° images taken onair and an always busy mind, which gives him new ideas and new projects to present to his customers.

Just remember: Keep the blue side up!

Can you tell us more about your background and passions?
Growing up I was always tinkering with things and spent much of my free time building and experimenting. One the funniest stories that my mom tells me is that I figure out how to make the Vacuum run backwards as a child and used it to shoot my action figures across the room. As a young boy my Father was a Helicopter Pilot, often times he would fly the helicopter home and I would get to ride in it. This planted the seed for my love of aviation which has only grown as time goes on. I remember as a child in my Carseat in the helicopter looking out and being amazed with the aerial perspective. From 1000ft humanity looked so small and you could see the larger patterns of human life invisible from the ground...

Originally, after graduating from the University of Washington I worked in Real Estate Development. I had been an avid photographer growing up and loved to document my travels and the timeline of life. After working a while in Real Estate Development I started to fly remote control helicopters for fun. It all started when I saw a small indoor Remote Helicopter that reminded me of the fond memories of my childhood. I stopped in a hobby shop one day and saw a helicopter just like the one my Father had flown and I had to have it.

I spent the next year learning to fly, and then one day after working from a fullsize plane I had the idea to strap a camera to the bottom of a helicopter, reason being the whole time I was shooting from the plane I wished I could go lower and have more time to compose the perfect shot without all the atmospheric haze.

The first version of the helicam was very rough. The camera mount was small and only held a small camera. Flight time was very limited and I was very nervous to fly the helicam with a camera underneath. With time and patience I refined the helicopter and made it larger. As it grew so, did the camera it was able to carry. Eventually I was able to carry the same cameras and lenses I had been shooting with on the ground full frame digital SLR's. After a few years of running the business I stumbled upon panorama photography and the idea of combining it with my aerial platform was irresistible. To be able to have a flying tripod and show the world from a new point of view was extremely exciting. I worked round the clock for a year on my first aerial panorama. It is very difficult to reliably produce high quality aerial panoramas since the helicopter must hover almost perfectly still. As difficult as some panoramas are from a tripod, imagine if your tripod was flying around being blown here and there by the wind!

I always enjoy a challenge though, and after a year I had developed a system that works great. Now it came time to present the idea to the market. The first release of our "Aerial Tours" was extremely well received! It was such a great feeling to go into clients offices and show them a product they had never before seen, and one that they were genuinely excited about!

That first year we offered the service we traveled all over the world shooting Aerial Tours, from the most expensive Real Estate Listing in Aspen Colorado, to the Beaches of Waikiki.

click here to view Waikiki Honolulu aerial panorama

click here to view Lake Tahoe aerial panorama

click here to view Central Park New York aerial panorama

click here to view Midway Geyser aerial panorama

click here to view Capitol building aerial panorama

click here to view Seattle center panorama

It was a wild ride and extremely enjoyable to get paid for work you would gladly do for free, and even moreover to have a product that people were genuinely excited about. Real Estate developers loved the ability to show the views that their condo development would have 2 years in the future. City Planners could now visualize from the air in 360 degrees, and Tourist could really get a feel for a destination with the 360 degree panoramas.

You are using RC controlled aircraft to shoot the panoramas, can you tell us more about it?
The Aircraft we use is a Minicopter Joker.

It is manufactured in Germany by Minicopter and is an extremely high quality remote helicopter. It is powered by lithium batteries and the way ours is configured it can run about 10 minutes per charge. This is plenty of time to get up and shoot a variety of views and when the time comes we simply land and change out the batteries and we are off again (we usually bring around 10 sets with us).

I imagine that flying and shooting must be really a lot to deal with. How do you operate?
Flying and shooting was at first very challenging but, like anything, the more you practice it becomes second nature. Sometimes I have another operator to run the camera but often times I am by myself for the more scenic panoramas and shoot those solo. For the solo shoots I have a heads up display that downlinks from the camera to my sunglasses so I am able to compose the panorama and monitor the progress. I always keep the heli with me in my car in hopes of capturing dramatic lighting or scenery. The thing I enjoy shooting most is changing weather systems. The dramatic shifts when storm clouds roll in, or rays of sun bursting though black clouds. Also with great scenery the golden light in the morning and late evening always makes for dramatic shadows and contrast from the air. Usually for these early morning shots it is tough to get a camera operator to get out of bed so I am stuck shooting them alone :)

Do you need permissions to fly?
Permissions to fly vary from location to location. We are always in contact with the appropriate authorities and observe safe practices always. Typically our panoramas are well under 400ft which is usually the lowest you would ever find conventional aircrafts flying in the US.

Can you tell us more about what portions of the panorama you shoot, and which ones are inserted in photoshop ?
Typically the entire panorama is shot from the air, sometimes we will need to take a ground shot of some sky to patch in. Post processing is usually just level, curves, and removing any of the helicopter parts visible from the panorama. I try to let the views from the air speak for themselves. I find that if I do my homework and capture an image in a dramatic light then very little is needed in post processing.

What are Aerial Pan's services?
The professional services we provide are: Aerial Photography, Aerial Video/Film, and Aerial Tours (aerial spherical panoramas). Additionally, we just started offering Aerial Visualizations that shows a aerial spherical panorama with a future building rendered on top of the panorama. Pretty fun since it allows folks to see what their building will look like on the actual site and get a feel for the context. Our other main services are 360 degrees panoramas to show the view that high-rise condos will have, once they are completed. For this we take the helicopter up to a certain floors elevation and shoot a 360 degrees shot to show potential buyers what their view will be, if they decide to...relocate. This is neat because it allows the developers to know what the view will look like years before completion and allows them to use the actual views to market the condominiums.
Click here to view a video of Aerialpan's services.

Future projects?
We just got done filming a segment for National Geographic and have some upcoming projects that are taking us to Croatia and Moab Utah. Another one that I am excited about will be in the Qwest Stadium in Seattle. We will be shooting an aerial tour out above the field as well as some low level aerial video within the complex. Video is particularly challenging but immensely rewarding when it works out. With a photo, all of the component pieces only need to work together for a split second to capture a photo. With video the helicopter must be flying smooth and controlled for the whole time. We will be devoting some more time this year to filming more action sports from the low angles the remote helicopter can provide. I am also hoping to catch up on processing some of my personal aerial work, mainly 150 to 180 degree aerial panoramas from scenic locations around the United States.

Links:
AerialPan.com
Email: info at aerialpan.com