Eye in the sky opens new vistas for Fearghus

Lifestyle –  Judy Murphy meets the man  pioneering an innovative drone technology service in Galway

Mention the word drones and most of us immediately think of the low-flying remotely-controlled vehicles that are regularly used in war zones for bombing or spying missions.

But drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, to give them their full title, have many other, more fruitful uses, and these are now being explored locally.

“In Connemara, flying drones down rivers between trees or above the tree canopies gives you a new perspective on places you are already familiar with,” says Fearghus Foyle.

Clifden man Fearghus is the founder of Aerial Eye, which provides a specialised photography and video service using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

While his photos of Connemara are fantastic, there’s a lot more to this technology than capturing beautiful images, he says.

It can be used by farmers, developers, archaeologists, estate agents, hoteliers, and tourism bodies to compile images and information that benefit their business.

Drones are also being increasingly employed by Search and Rescue groups, as they are faster off the ground than helicopters and offer better views of locations being searched. That’s because they are closer to the ground and their cameras are pointed straight down, rather than at an angle. The Navy is currently planning to use them in its surveillance of Irish waters. And that’s not all.

“For archaeology, you can send one over a site to get an aerial view,” says Fearghus. “That gives much more insight into, say, building patterns than photos taken from ground level.”

Farmers can also send up drones to see the lie of the land – to count cattle and sheep, or check which areas might require extra fertiliser or water. The vehicles can be pre-programmed to travel the same route over a period of time, allowing farmers to build up a bank of information.

And, according to Fearghus, drones offer “spectacular footage” of sports and entertainment such as parades and outdoor spectacles.

Fearghus, whose family own the Dolphin Beach guesthouse on Clifden’s Sky Road, has been fascinated by radio-controlled craft since childhood.

“I always had a notion to put a camera up on a craft, but it never worked,” he says.

He did a degree in landscape architecture in Dublin in the early 2000s, also studying at Stanford University in California as an Erasmus student during that time.

He then got a job as a landscape planner in Dublin before taking time off to travel to South America and then to Australia, where he worked in architecture.

“I love photography, and for me to spend time travelling around South America and Australia was amazing,” he says.

Fearghus then moved to London to study further, and was offered a job with a company that specialised in windfarm planning applications. His role was to assess the visual aspects of developments – how they would sit in a landscape.

When he was with that company, Fearghus first realised how Unmanned Aerial Vehicles offered exciting new possibilities for photography.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.