A Year of Flying High at Amazing Aerial
Amazing Aerial’s had a busy 2024, from massive community expansion to new infrastructure to make our team work even better. Here is a look back at our year and how we’re trying to break new ground as an agency.
Dec 20, 2024
A view of a white cotton castle with travertine terraces and thermal pools at sunset, Pamukkale, Turkey. Carlo Alleva took this photo during an epic road trip. © Amazing Aerial Agency / Carlo Alleva
By Rebecca Duras
From Papua New Guinea to Peru. From the Azores to Madagascar. In 2024, Amazing Aerial team members flew across the globe, returning with more photos and videos than ever before.
Besides extensive travel, there were other big developments at Amazing Aerial—and we don’t just mean the hundreds of photographers that joined the agency in just one year. Amazing Aerial also put in a lot of work to make the agency a modern powerhouse with the right infrastructure in place to support its photographers.
Here is a quick recap of what Amazing Aerial was up to in 2024 and how we’re setting ourselves up to fly even higher in 2025.
Our Agency
Tortoise Mountain TV Tower and the Wuhan skyline, China. Kieran Williams took this photo on a one-month trip through China, where he made sure to get off the typical tourism beat. © Amazing Aerial Agency / Kieran Williams
Some of the biggest developments at Amazing Aerial in 2024 were to our infrastructure, which is now better placed to serve both our team members and the photo buyers and agencies we partner with.
Amazing Aerial’s team spent months working on developing an AI tool that automatically adds metadata for content that is uploaded to our platform. “Photographers love to go out and shoot and edit, but the last thing they want to do is put keywords and captioning because that’s really boring,” Paul Prescott, founder and CEO of Amazing Aerial says. “We spent four months training the AI tool on our collection.”
After the AI tool was released, the number of submissions skyrocketed at Amazing Aerial. In the first seven years, the agency had 100,000 pieces of content, then shot up to 150,000 over the span of just six months.
The addition of another dedicated editor, Nunzio La Rocca, also increased Amazing Aerial’s assets, especially when it comes to video, which is more complex for creatives to edit on their own. “I’ve had the chance to learn new skills, contribute to innovative projects, and be part of a team that values creativity and excellence,” says Nunzio.
Additionally, Amazing Aerial is expanding access to community education through its dedicated community platform. “We’re trying to build this community platform as a place where our professional photographers will be able to teach other photographers important skills,” Paul explains. Besides creating a more tight-knit team, the community platform will add important diversity to Amazing Aerial’s revenue and train more photographers in the skills needed to create beautiful aerial photography.
These developments form the foundation of Amazing Aerial’s planned developments for 2025. “ At the beginning of the year, we’re going to be launching a new platform,” Paul says. The new DAM system will streamline the process of managing assets at Amazing Aerial, enabling the quick upload and curation of thousands of photos and videos, which is vital as the agency continues to expand. It will also make it faster and easier to distribute new assets to partner agencies and direct clients.
Amazing Aerial’s goals are oriented towards a better experience for creatives as well as our clients. “We’re a very small agency and we’re developing all this technology and frankly looking around nobody has this, so this is really going to be a strong point for us and be able to scale much faster,” Paul says. By creating a bigger collection of assets, but retaining the close-knit network and personable service of Amazing Aerial, Paul is creating a creative community that is better able to serve photo buyers, whether it’s by meeting creative briefs or delivering content with quick turnaround.
Our Team
One of the biggest developments at Amazing Aerial is the way that our team grew this year. From the beginning of 2024, we went from a team of 150 to 350 photographers in 85 countries. Paul Prescott thought it was important to give access to the agency’s infrastructure and premium distribution network to as many creatives as possible. “I just believe that it’s really important to have a voice and give voice to others, especially in these times where things are becoming quite strange, so that’s why I wanted to grow the team,” he says.
Besides growing numerically, Amazing Aerial intentionally diversified its team, focusing on adding photographers from places that were not already well-covered by our team portfolio. The growth of the Nigeria team as well as the addition of several talented photographers from Kenya and South America is one of the most exciting developments this year. “I want to cover the world from above, so for me it is also exciting to see new places,” Paul says.
For Paul, the expansion into Africa is also personal as he was raised in South Africa for ten years. “I would say historically Africa’s always left behind,” he says. “I believe that we’ve taken a lot from Africa and I believe that we should empower the African [creatives] because they have a lot to offer.”
Amazing Aerial’s team members are not just content to passively join the agency and submit photos. They are an active part of our growth and development, taking initiative in developing the community. Members such as Abdulrahman Abubakar and Kalada Briggs are organizing meetups and training sessions in Nigeria. Along with our trip to the Siena Drone Awards, it’s been a big year for taking the community offline.
Besides meet-ups, Amazing Aerial team members are getting involved in other aspects of making the community active. Two of our members even wrote for Amazing Aerial Magazine. Francois Detaille shared two stories, about his work with a koala rescue and about his road trip through Western Australia, while Anton Crone wrote about the rewards and challenges of photographing whales around South Africa.
Our Travels
While there have been a lot of exciting different developments in 2024, we still get the most excited about travel and photography. Here is a quick round-up of the most exciting places our team members traveled to this year.
Alexander Baert says, “This summer, I went to Madagascar, best of the best!”
Carlo Alleva shared with us that he took a road trip with friends through Turkey, capturing over 1,000 photos and videos. “One of the highlights of the trip was experiencing the breathtaking white cotton castle of Pamukkale and witnessing the magical sight of air balloons rising over the valleys of Cappadocia,” he says.
Georgi Krastev spent over one month traveling to Papua New Guinea, a country that was poorly represented in Amazing Aerial’s assets before. “It was an incredible adventurous journey, and I met lots of local people. I learnt a lot about their culture, local customs, and style of life,” he says.
George Henry Nolan IV took several exciting trips in 2024, including one trip to the Algarve that was a collaboration with the camping company Indiecampers. He also embarked on a family road trip that sounds like a dream. “This summer I took a two-month road trip around France, Northern Italy, and the UK with my wife and dog in tow,” he says. Also part of the family was his drone, which he used to capture the entire trip.
Kieran Williams took a one month trip to China. Besides visiting Shanghai and Hong Kong, he traveled the length and width of the country. “It was an incredible journey, and I saw lesser-known places along the way,” he shares.
Volker Gehrmann visited the Azores Islands in a partnership with a Spanish wine magazine. “I did an aerial documentary about the very special vineyards they have on volcanic Pico Island,” he shares, adding that he fell in love with the destination so much that he plans on visiting again in the winter.
Many things may change in 2025, but Amazing Aerial’s love for travel and bringing back footage from new destinations, as well as our commitment to growth that serves creatives, agencies, and buyers, remains consistent. (Could you add to this ending that our photographers can travel and enjoy their adventures, confident in the knowledge that they have an agency fully supporting them. They can rest assured that their content will be utilized effectively, enabling them to generate income from their trips. A true lifestyle agency that combines passion and purpose.
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