Some of the most fascinating structures in the world like the Great Wall of China, ancient mysteries like the Nacka geoglyphs in Peru, awesome images of our blue planet from space and Google maps which have entered our daily lives, were made known to us thanks to the art of aerial photography, which involves the taking of pictures of the ground from elevated platforms. Aerial photography is used in many fields such as cartography, archaeology, environmental studies, surveillance, filming of movies, marketing and commercial advertising, in land use planning and property analysis.

Aerial photography was first put into practice over Paris in 1858, by the photographer and balloonist Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, and for second time on April 24, 1909, over Rome for the filming of the silent movie ‘Wilbur Wright undseine Flugmaschine’. In 1911, the Russian military engineer Colonel Potte V.F. designed the first semi-automatic camera, which was used during the First World War for the aerial mapping of battlefields.


foto Larko offers high quality, high-resolution Aerial Shots and Aerial Videos from airplanes and helicopters.


Nowadays different platforms are used for the taking of aerial photographs such as commercial aircrafts, helicopters, blimps and airships. Depending on the platform, the camera is either mounted on the platform, or held in hand and the images are triggered remotely, or taken by a photographer. The art of aerial photography involves different cameras and angles, and produces vertical photographs which are taken straight down, or oblique (sideways) type photographs, which are taken from an angle and are called low, or steep oblique, depending on the angle. Vertical or oblique aerial photographs are often stitched together to create one picture, or they are combined, depending on their purpose.

Vertical photographs are used in photogrammetry in the fields of geology, topographic mapping, and architecture, and they are traditionally taken with special large format cameras with calibration and geometric documentation properties. Orthophotos are vertical photographs which have been geometrically corrected and they are commonly used in geographic information systems. Google maps arecreated from the combination of large orthophotos, divided into tiles, which are derived from multiple sources and are overlaid onto a digital elevation model to simulate 3D landscapes.

Aerial photography is also an important commercial skill in the service of commercial advertising and marketing and is used by many industries, including the land development and real estate sector which represents a large part of today's economy. Aerial photographs for land development and buying and selling of properties is much more impressive than photographs taken from the ground and can offer a more complete representation of a multiple project, a plot of land, coastal and other properties, and give potential buyers a better view of any property and the surrounding roads, schools and shopping centers.

The crew at fotoLarko has been trained on aerial shots and videos from airplanes and helicopters for advertising for tourist promotion purposes, journalism/News coverage, historical research and mapping, and for personal archives of your town or the whole of Cyprus.

For more information and to set up a meeting to discuss the details of your project you can contact George Larkos of foto Larko at +357 26 936181.