VisualChaos Studios

Photogrammetry: The Process of Collecting Survey Grade Photo Data The job of aerial mapping and surveying depends on high accuracy and precision. Using GPS correction technology precise positioning data and information for the drone can be achieved while it is deployed. Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) systems built into survey grade drone technology expand upon and increase the already existing centimeter accurate Ground Control Point techniques (GCP) and Post Processing Kinematic (PPK) techniques used by surveyors. What is Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) and Post Processing Kinematic (PPK) RTK is an application of surveying to correct for common errors in current global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). When the signal from satellites travels towards the receiver, it goes through 20,200 km of ionosphere and atmosphere down to Earth. The ionospheric effect significantly slows the signal and also can disturb it on the way. In addition, many factors, such as clouds, or obstacles, can affect the t...

Top Tips for Fantastic Business Profile Pictures As potential clients are likely to engage with you in digital form - whether this be on your website, Facebook page or LinkedIn profile - before they meet you, a professional head shot can help introduce them to the 'you' you want them to meet.  At VisualChaos Studios, we have years of experience in making sure you look your best in the studio but here's just a few things you can do in advance of the session to make sure you're 100% ready to make that perfect first impression. Sleep Well - yes OK, you're not preparing for the catwalk but its worth getting a good night's sleep for a couple of nights before your appointment to make sure you look your most refreshed.  The same applies to avoiding alcohol and heavy meals the night before - skip these and you can be fresh as a daisy for your shoot. Watch What you Wear - you will know what suits you best and what will be the strongest image to project for the industry...

How Drone Photos Turn into 2D and 3D Surveys “Photogrammetry” is a process for measuring actual distances through the study of photographs. In aerial Photogrammetry, aerial digital pictures taken by drones are used to gather detailed physical information from the ground. Realistic and precise photo maps and 3D reconstructions of topographic surfaces are then generated by merging enough of these overlapping pictures into orthomosaic 2D stitched maps and 3D models accordingly. With drone photogrammetry, precise GPS data and GIS expertise, specialists surveyors can utilise this technology to generate models for use in such environments as infrastructure, waste management, mining, and aggregate workflow processing, to name a few as there are a multiple of applications that drone photogrammetry can be used. Humans use Photogrammetry When Looking at Objects Photogrammetry can be understood when we consider what we do ourselves with our own eyes. The human eyes receive two distinct inputs at ...

3D modelling of your commercial property is now an affordable reality thanks to drone technology. Creating a 3D model is a much simpler process than you might think, given the new available technology and software today. An hour’s flight time from one of our drone operators utilising our state of the art UAV and camera payloads is usually all that is needed to ensure accurate aerial photographs are taken from all angles for the property. A number of preplanned flight paths will be flown across the property both to gather plan view shots as well as elevation shots to ensure we have the required data to create the model.  One week later, you will be in receipt of all the code and imagery that you need to embed the finished interactive model into your website and social media accounts and to link it to your clients and potential clients to allow them to explore it for themselves. - Wedding & Event Venues - Property Marketing - Architects - Construction & Landscape Gardening -...

When you normally think about having a roof inspection, you likely think of ladders at least and scaffolding at worst.  A human being has to climb on up to the roof with all of the health and safety considerations that this incurs, not to mention the potential for damage to the roof itself during the inspection process. Drones carrying both standard and thermal cameras offer you the opportunity to carry out a thorough and detailed inspection of the roof from all angles with minimal human intervention – minimising the time, set up and safety risks of traditional inspection methods.  Provided that the inspection can be carried with the landowners permission (required for the takeoff and landing site of the drone) the UAV can fly over the roof both recording what is there and also providing live flight data to pinpoint areas for closer or further inspection.  Maintenance teams can then be deployed in a targeted way to problem areas if required, making a cost saving and minimising any disr...

Ebbsfleet Garden City is an exciting housing development that’s currently taking shape in Kent. We were delighted to be invited to work again with the BBC One Show to provide aerial footage of the development for a piece that they are producing. The vision for the new city is expansive incorporating both business and residential areas with improved public transport, riverside walks, seven city parks, schools and commercial areas designed to provide both local employment as well as a healthy and inviting space in which to live and work. The wide open spaces of the area as it currently stands were perfect for creating aerial footage and we focused on capturing both the scale and detail of the development.  Opposite are a collection of clips that formed part of the overall finished piece on the BBC. #aerial #BBC #drone #Ebbsfleet #GardenCity #Kent #lake #OneShow #quarry Ebbsfleet Garden City Development - BBC One Show #aerial #BBC #drone #Ebbsfleet #GardenCity #Kent #lake #OneShow #quar...

Thermal Fire Monitoring Following a Grain Store Terminal Explosion Grain Store Explosion and Year-Long Fire – July 5, 2020 – Tilbury Port, London On July 5, 2020, a series of events (possibly by a spark) triggered a large dust explosion and a subsequent fire at the Grain Store Terminal at the Port of Tilbury in London. This was a serious event that required the attention of a large-scale emergency response to get the subsequent grain fire under control and avoid additional explosions. No one was seriously hurt, which is nothing short of a miracle given the number of people on the scene and the amount of reinforced concrete and debris thrown high into the sky before raining down on the surrounding buildings. Traditional firefighting methods and techniques are ineffective in the case of grain storage fires. Using water to extinguish the inferno is ineffective with grain and dust fires, and the added weight might have caused a catastrophic structural collapse, exacerbating an already chal...

If you’re a small, owner managed business, you have so many different roles to play that it’s easy to forget that you are, as far as your clients are concerned the face of your business. When they are searching for people with your skill set online (and these days, unless you’re in a prominent physical location, it’s more likely that they’ll search online than find any other way), you have 20 seconds to make a first impression and hold their interest for long enough to be able to deliver your message.  So your profile photo really does need to be more than an after thought or a picture that you use to simply get ‘something’ out there.  The impression that you make on your potential clients needs to reflect the values of your business and a professional business head shot is one really easy and effective way to do this. Your photograph should feature on your social media accounts as well as your website and you will also be asked for it to accompany any articles that you wish to submit ...

Marketing Your Small Business There are many small business owners who have already set in motion their plans to make 2020/21 their most profitable and successful year ever.  There is no doubt that working for yourself has its advantage but it can be tough, especially if you are working alone. A national media group recently published a study that cited marketing as the business challenge facing small businesses.  Marketing is so much more than advertising – it’s about adding your company’s value at the heart of everything you do so it shines out to your potential clients as they come across in either the real or digital worlds. In the case of the small business owner, your clients want to engage as much with you as with the products and services that you provide. Your branding is not just your logo – it’s your individual voice in the world and it is derived from your unique values and vision.  Once you know what you want to say and how you want to say it , it is so much easier to appl...

Why do Commercial Headshots Matter? It’s undeniable that we are living in an age where there’s more than a good chance that the first-time people see you in an employment context, it will be in the form of an image online. Whether this be for a job application, or prior to a business meeting or potential sale, your online presentation is just as important as your in-person style now.  That, of course, will vary according to the field in which you work – a suit and tie might not be required for many occupations – but the professionalism of the image that you need to project remains just as important. A quick scroll through LinkedIn shows that many folk are still using selfies and poor quality phone photos as their profile image in this business to business arena and, while books shouldn’t be judged by their covers, it’s something that we all do.  Your professional online presence should be just that – professional. When we talk about headshots in this context, we’re not talking about b...

How Do Solar Panels Operate? How Does the Sun Affect a Photovoltaic Solar Panel? The sun continually discharges little parcels of energy called photons, which arrive with us here on earth approximately 8.5 minutes after they have left their source.  Those little photons however can take 100,000 years to get from the sun’s core to the surface where they can start their journey to us – so we’re bathing in some very old light when we hit the beach on a hot summer’s day! Solar panels are designed to capture the power of this light and convert it into energy that we can use – natural, clean and green. How Does a Solar Photovoltaic Panel Work? Solar panels are made up of individual cells often constructed of silicon.  These cells, call Photo Voltaic (PV) cells become energised when they are in contact with photons and this energy is converted into a usable electrical current.  PV cells are wired together in collections on a board and then boards can be wired together into arrays to create ...

PROPERTY INSPECTIONS AND SURVEYS Drone Roof Inspection Whether you’re inspecting a new roof following or during development or investigating water ingress or heat loss through to an insurance claim, it’s important to capture accurate image data efficiently and in a timely manner. We are happy to work alone or with your roofing specialist/company and can provide video feeds to ground personnel in real-time for directions as required. Drones offer many unique advantages for high-rise access. In the hands of qualified and approved professional operators such as Drone Media Imaging, access is safer, controlled, and efficient. Roof spaces are not walked on or touched and therefore not damaged further or unsafe to personnel. We can offer regular maintenance visits at set schedules so that clients can plan and target maintenance resources more successfully, targeting problems areas more efficiently. We can be deployed quickly after storms and bad weather to detect lost tiles or damage to flat...

Survey Grade Photogrammetry Surveying by Drone The roots of photogrammetry can be traced back to military surveillance and reconnaissance during World War I. Pilots used advances made in photography coupled with manned flight to obtain image based intelligence from behind enemy lines. Without context, the pictures were worthless, however, these photogrammetry pioneers used local landmarks, landscape characteristics and known ground data to identify the orientation of objects of interest in the shots. These methods would change over subsequent decades as new advanced instruments and techniques became available, from stratospheric U2 planes to sophisticated meteorological satellites, and in recent years, contemporary UAV/drone photogrammetry. Today’s photogrammetric maps captured by drones are created using sophisticated GIS equipment and software capable of producing surveyor-grade measurements of properties, landscapes & infrastructure. These maps are sufficiently precise to give i...

Trained and Certified in Aerial Thermography Drone Media Imaging use trained and certified thermographers to deliver thermographic services and inspections across many domestic, industrial and commercial sectors throughout the UK. Whether it is solar photovoltaic panel inspection in accordance with IEC 62446-3:2017 and BS EN ISO 62446-1:2016 or fire detection and management in disasters zones or underground landfill fires, Drone Media Imaging can deploy across the UK quickly, efficiently and with the right experience. Aerial Thermography Category 2 Thermography certification to category level 2 focuses on radiometric temperature measurement analysis and the benefits of obtaining precise temperature data from challenging environments for diagnosing and reporting purposes. Whether for qualitative evaluation or quantitative evaluation our report and diagnosis analysis provide you with answers following a non-destructive inspection format from the air via UAV drones equipped with the lates...

Aerial Property Inspections and Surveys - Drones and the Construction Industry Despite the fact that drones have a huge amount to offer the construction industry, it’s an area that has been slow to develop. However, the use of UAVs when it comes to all sorts of building projects is finally beginning to increase and construction firms are realising the benefits of having a camera in the sky. In the USA, where we tend to look for previews of what’s to come to us here across the pond, it’s predicted that a large percentage of drones will employed in the field of construction and this is a sizeable amount when you consider that the overall number of drones forecast to be in the country by 2021 is in excess of seven million. Drones can offer benefits in - Building surveys - Inspection & monitoring - Thermal imaging to assess insulation efficiency, thermal bridging and water ingress. - Architectural design - Monitoring safety and security - Creation of marketing materials An airbou...

Thermal Fire Monitoring following Explosion at Grain Terminal https://www.dronemediaimaging.co.uk/case-study/thermal-fire-monitoring-following-explosion-at-grain-terminal/

Can you use a drone with a thermal camera to inspect building insulation? New buildings are now very efficient when it comes to heat management, retention and thermal living comfort, which can be attributed to architects using modern design tools, understanding and planning techniques. However, things can get missed and mistakes can be made during the building phase resulting in insulation failures and even thermal bridging whether in the design or from irregular building practices. Building insulation performance should always be inspected and measured following a new build to ensure that there are no defects such as missing insulation material and thermal bridging in the cavity walls, a problem caused when discarded cement/mortar is inadvertently discarded into the cavity wall – affectionately referred to as ‘snots’! Older properties may suffer from thermal failures due to older building methodology and building materials, a simple insulation inspection to determine where heat leaks ...

What Is Aerial Thermography and How Does It Work? All objects with a temperature above absolute zero give off infrared radiation, and the intensity of the radiation released increases as the temperature of the object rises. A thermal imaging camera is designed to detect this radiation intensity and render the different temperatures recorded into artificial colours so that the human viewer can ‘see’ these temperature differences and values. Visible light forms only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and the only part we can see. When pointed at an object or area, the sensor on a thermal camera allows the viewer to see the hidden infrared spectrum, which exists at wavelengths between visible light and microwaves. Ordinary digital cameras, like the human eye, detect visible light as it bounces around on and off surfaces/objects. This visible light is then focused through a lens system onto a surface that translates the light rays/beams into electrical signals and ultimately to ...

Can you use a thermal camera drone to detect water ingress to a flat roof? The perfect time to conduct a thermal inspection of a flat roof suspected of failure and allowing water to penetrate the substructure is in the summer months. This is because water when heated will hold its thermal temperature much longer than the surrounding roofing materials and therefore can be seen clearly when viewed with an infrared camera. The summer months offer the best time to ensure that any water laying beneath the top waterproof membrane is sufficiently heated up by the sun irradiation during the day. Then just before dusk when the sun is setting or better still, after the sun has set completely, the roofing substructure will lose its thermal capacity quickly, much quicker than any water that has penetrated. The resulting thermal image will clearly show any water that resides in the substructure and has not evaporated away from the surface. What are the best environmental conditions to conduct a lea...

Domestic and Commercial Solar Farms Using Photovoltaic PV Panels PV Photovoltaic Panel Inspection by Drone Using Drone technology to inspect Solar Panels makes perfect sense and presents a safe, cost effective and quick solution to see faults both at the installation stage and in subsequent follow up years. Solar panels can suffer from various faults which deplete the efficiency of the panels to produce electricity. Everything from manufacturing failures to bird droppings and tree sap debris can affect the panel’s performance. Getting up above roof installed panels would usually require scaffolding and understanding the risk of working at height, issues that are not a consideration when using a drone. Primary issues which are commonly found in solar PV installations are defective cells, strings, and defective converter boxes. Defective cells may be found individually or as a group/string whereas a defective converter will appear as a single ‘hot spot’ that does not fit the cell layout ...

What are the photography considerations when selling your products on Amazon? For a long time, Amazon has been one of the UK’s most popular destinations for online shopping. There’s almost nothing that you can’t buy on there and the addition of Prime means that members can receive their items faster direct to their door.  It’s a trend that shows no signs of slowing with the consumer love for online shopping growing month on month.  It’s fair to say that it’s hard to beat the type of price competitiveness and fast delivery that Amazon have to offer. Therefore, developing a store to allow you to sell your products on Amazon is a popular addition to the portfolio of many online retailers but it’s hard to be successful in such a busy marketplace.  The first thing that a potential customer will see of the products that your business has to offer is the photographs (Amazon allow you up to seven photographs per listing). This means that one of the keys to standing out from the crowd is the q...

When is the best time to use a Thermal Infrared camera for conducting roof inspections? UAVs or Drone’s as they are known have the ability to create great aerial photography and videography which has been understood for some times, however, were you aware that they can also be fitted with thermal infrared cameras to add a whole new dimension to property inspections? Thermal imaging cameras provide a non-contact temperature measurement across areas that are hard to access or see from a ground. The health and safety risks associated with working at height are minimised when using drone technology, as are the risks of causing damage to the structure through the inspection process itself. With UAVs carrying thermal imaging cameras, temperature data is captured in real-time as well as recorded both quickly and accurately with the resulting heat map presented as colour images in both a qualitative and quantitative reporting format.  Image analysis and reporting completed by a thermographer a...

Clothing Photography using the Ghost Mannequin Technique If your business sells clothing of any sort, you’ll appreciate how important it is to showcase your range in the best possible way to your potential clients. Obviously in a bricks and mortar store, customers are free to touch, feel and try on garments for themselves, but that’s not an option when it comes to online retailing. The trend for online shopping was already on the increase pre-Covid but the fact that we couldn’t visit stores in person for such an extended period, introduced internet purchasing to those who had been slow to turn to it in terms of fashion.  It’s a trend that shows now signs of slowing as even though the stores have reopened, many people have found the experience of browsing huge ranges of clothing online and having them delivered to their door too convenient to stop. This, and the lockdown boom in new businesses, have meant that there are many new clothing retailers entering the market.  Individuals who h...