Bluesky Launches Online Service for Historical Aerial Photography of the UK

Bluesky Managing Director Rachel Tidmarsh with her Sales Manager Ralph Coleman (looking very 1940's!). “This is an important development for anyone with a personal or professional interest in the past,” said Rachel Tidmarsh, Managing Director of Bluesky.

“By giving visitors to www.oldaerialphotos.com the ability to search through literally millions of images with just a few clicks of a mouse we are bringing together for the first time a valuable and comprehensive record of our past. Many of these images have previously only been available to archivists or those with specialist knowledge of how to find them, now it will be easy for everyone to search through these historic collections.”

 Visitors to www.oldaerialphotos.com can search through a number of historically significant collections of both vertical and oblique aerial photography. Through an ambitious and ongoing acquisition programme and agreements with a number of historically important private, commercial and government organisations Bluesky has already secured, and will continue to do so, unrivalled access to a photographic record of the country’s past. Bluesky’s own team of photographic experts have collated and formatted information about every image creating a Master Aerial Database that powers the online service.

Images that are available to purchase from www.oldaerialphotos.com include some of the earliest commercial aerial survey images, military photography from World War II and one of the largest collections of oblique photography in the UK. Offering a record of most major UK cities and towns, transport and utility infrastructure and commercial property developments www.oldaerialphotos.com is an invaluable resource for anyone with a personal or professional interest in local studies, genealogy, boundary disputes, environmental land use research or town planning, for example.