Advantages and disadvantages of aerial photography | Way2Benefits (2024)

The science of taking photos from a point in the air for the purpose of making some type of study of the earth’s surface is called aerial photography. Aerial photography was the first method of the remote sensing process. Today, It is widely used for remote sensing. In addition, the first aerial photograph was taken by a French photographer Gaspard Felix Tournachon (Nadar) in the year 1958 from a captive balloon from a 1200 feet altitude of Paris. Let us check out some important points of aerial photography advantages and disadvantages to know more about it.

Advantages of Aerial Photography:

1. It provides a synoptic view. Example: A birds-eye view of the terrain.
2. This type of photography is time-saving and economic.
3. It has a time-freezing ability. Example: It permanently preserves the existing ground conditions at a particular time.
4. It can provide a stereoscopic view of the terrain. Example: Three-dimensional view.
5. Aerial photography provides timely information.
6. Cheaper than conventional surveying.
7. It is safer than conventional surveying.
8. It is accessible to even remote and difficult areas such as high mountains, dense forests.
9. Worldwide coverage is easily available at different scales.
10. It provides a current photographic view of the ground that no map can equal.
11. The photograph may be in the hands of the user within a few hours of it being taken. Hence, it is more readily obtained than a map.
12. It shows military features.
13. Update objective record day-to-day with the area.

Disadvantages of Aerial Photography:

1. It is costly and requires more training to interpret than a map.
2. It lacks marginal data.
3. Ground features are difficult to identify or interpret without symbols and sometimes obscured by other ground details such as buildings in wooden areas.
4. The scale of aerial photography is not uniform.
5. It has many distortions such as relief displacement, vertical exaggeration. Hence, distances, directions, and areas can not be measured directly from aerial photographs without removing this distortion.

Explore more information:

1. Application of aerial photography
2. Characteristics of aerial photography