Chapter 1 - Introduction to Small-Format Aerial Photography

Abstract

Aerial photography has provided the means to see the Earth ‘‘as the birds do.’’ During its first half-century of development, aerial photography was little used because of high cost and risk. With the introduction of powered flight, aerial photography expanded tremendously throughout the 1900s based on many technological inventions for various imaging devices plus the airborne and space-based platforms to carry those devices. These innovations were accelerated by military needs, particularly during World Wars I and II as well as the Cold War. Since World War I, aerial photography evolved in two directions—larger formats for accurate mapping and smaller formats for reconnaissance usage. During the last 30 years, technical advances in electronic devices and desktop computing have encouraged the use of small format aerial photography with increasingly sophisticated analysis methods. Various types of electronic sensors and digital imagery progressively have taken the place of analog film photography in recent decades.