A construction background, then a 100 megapixel camera pointed at your roof

The background is construction rather than photography, which turns out to matter more than it sounds. Knowing what a failed flaunching leads to, or why a valley silts up on that particular elevation and not the other one, is the difference between a folder of pretty aerial pictures and a report that tells you something.

Plenty of drone operators can fly. Fewer can look at a photograph of a ridge line and say which end of it is going to let water in first, and fewer still will tell you when the answer is that nothing much is wrong and you should keep your money.

The work grew out of Hembury Contracting, a Devon contracting business, where the recurring problem was the same every time: somebody needed to know the condition of a roof, and every way of finding out was slow, expensive or dangerous. An aircraft with a serious camera on it solved that, and it has been the job ever since.

Everything is flown from Exeter, which puts most of Devon inside an hour. The South West is the patch because it is home, and because roofs here take a specific kind of hammering that you only really learn by working on them.