Buckham was the leading aerial photographer of his day and was renowned for his atmospheric shots of the landscape. He preferred to take shots at an altitude of between 1000 and 2000 feet as he felt that at any point higher ? details will become irritatingly small and uninteresting and only useful for record and survey purposes?. For this photograph he has, however, climbed to 16000 feet which has allowed him to capture the impressive storm clouds from above.
Alfred G Buckham (English, 1879 - 1956)
Alfred Buckham's first ambition was to be a painter, but after seeing Turner's pictures in the National Gallery, he returned home and made a bonfire of his own work. He was the first head of aerial reconnaissance for the Royal Navy in the First World War and later a captain in the Royal Naval Air Service. After crashing nine times he was obliged to undergo a tracheotomy and was discharged as a hundred per cent disabled. Nevertheless, he continued to take aerial photographs with a heavy plate camera, leaning perilously out of the aeroplane, where his delight in picture making greatly increased the risk of accident.