In interview: Aerial photographer Jason Hawkes

If you’ve seen a recent aerial shot of London – maybe on LinkedIn, maybe one that has made you stop scrolling and think “Wow, that’s some city” – then chances are you already know Jason Hawkes’ work. Over a decades-long career, the aerial photographer has published more than 50 books, provided images to clients as varied as Apple, Virgin Atlantic, Red Bull and HSBC, and worked with real estate and architecture companies to bring the world shots of their work from a unique perspective. Hawkes took his first flight in a microlight airplane – “like a motorbike in the sky” – in his early 20s. Now 57, he has seen the capital change and change again from the sky. “The first time I flew over London, for my first book, One Canada Square in Canary Wharf was maybe halfway being built,” he says. “I was flying over Canary Wharf last year and there was a smaller building right in the middle that was being revamped. Somebody commissioned me to go and take some pictures of it, and I thought, ‘I’m so old, I actually remember that being built. Now they’re redoing the whole thing’.” Estates Gazette sat down with Hawkes to talk about the changing face of London’s built environment, new perspectives on old sights and the stresses of capturing the perfect picture. Helicopter view A young Hawkes knew he wanted to be a photographer before finishing art college. But it was that first microlight flight with a pal that immediately convinced him to do so from the skies. “The flight was quite cool. But what was really cool was what you could see, all the patterns and the crazy landscapes,” he recalls. “Even the most boring landscapes looked absolutely mental. I thought, ‘I’ll just become an aerial photographer’. I was so naive, I had just turned 22 or something. I got a bank loan with a mate of mine and we bought [a microlight]. We started flying around Kent just taking pictures of anything.” A commission from Photography magazine led to a first book deal with Random House. “There weren’t many people doing it,” Hawkes says of his aerial aptitude. “I don’t know how photographers are now, but it used to be you had a niche – you were a food photographer, or a fashion photographer, or whatever. So I got this niche.” Today, Hawkes estimates that 95% of his work is in London. He uses a group of pilots with various aircraft. His work gives him a particular take on the ways in which London’s built environment has shifted. Does he ever have concerns about overdevelopment in the capital? “I can see it,” he says. “I don’t have a problem with it in the City of London. But you look along the Thames and all the blocks in Vauxhall, Nine Elms and Blackfriars. I get sent all the proposals for new buildings. [Architects] say, ‘We need to do a CGI of this because we’re thinking of putting this building up’. I remember seeing them when Vauxhall was all low-rise and thinking, ‘Is this really going to happen?’ Now they’re doing it to Blackfriars. It’s a bit of a shame that they’re building all these houses on the river, and you don’t get access to the river so much anymore.” Look up Hawkes feels that his aerial view of London shows him the capital as it was meant to be seen, especially its towers. “It’s funny: I hardly ever go into the City [on foot], but when I do I always think it’s weird how you can’t really see the buildings,” he says. “They’re so high, one interrupts the other and you don’t really get a sense of them. So I love flying and seeing how everything links up, the green parts of London and the parks. Taking people flying over London is always good fun, I can get used to it because it’s no different to getting in the car. But taking other people up who have never done it before? You can look at Google Maps and Google Earth and all that kind of stuff, but it looks completely different to how you think, which is brilliant.” “You can’t take it for granted” Hawkes’ favourite views of London include looking from the east of the Square Mile back across the towers. “You’ve got the curve of the river in the background, and at dusk if you’re lucky you get really lovely colours in the sky,” he adds. “That viewpoint is just bonkers, it’s so cool. Another is when we sit in a hover on the Thames at Wapping and fly sideways up the river, getting more and more shots coming closer to Tower Bridge. No matter how many times I do it – and I do it whenever it’s a really good light – I just think this is such a cool job. It just feels amazing.” Remembering to appreciate the work is important to Hawkes. He recently took a final flight with a pilot he has worked with for more than a decade, and who is joining the Civil Aviation Authority. “We did a flight just a couple of days before Christmas, and the light was amazing,” Hawkes says. “You do become so used to it, but you can’t take it for granted and what a laugh it is.” Not that all of Hawkes’ descriptions of the flights sound like “a laugh”. For one, the photographer needs to think fast – light can change in an instant and getting the right shot before it disappears calls for luck as well as skill. “You don’t actually get that much time,” Hawkes says of the constraints he faces on an average flight. “On a good day in the summer, I might fly at dawn and at dusk, and we might do about two hours each time. It takes 12 minutes to get into town, so you get maybe an hour and 20 minutes overhead… It’s busy and there’s other aircraft as well. You’re chopping and changing lenses. It’s windy in the cabin. Sometimes you can’t hear the pilot. It’s quite stressful. “But I wouldn’t give it up for the world.” Images © Jason Hawkes Aerial Photography