Royal Gazette deputy chief photographer David Skinner is afraid of heights and doesn't like flying ...but the chance to hang out of an open door helicopter 1,000 feet above Bermuda was too good an assignment to pass up.

The result is more than a thousand new aerial images of a changing Bermuda landscape for the newspaper, and now Skinner is like an excited child who can't wait to get back on one of the rides at Disneyworld.

“You land but the adrenalin is still going, it's like doing a bungee jump,” said the veteran photographer whose images have been featured this week in the paper.

“I could do this on a regular basis, no problem, even though I hate heights and hate flying. I have to get a couple of drinks before flying, but unfortunately this helicopter didn't come with a bar! The next thing I would like to do is photograph from a hot air balloon.”

Skinner has had a few of aerial assignments in the past, the last being two years ago when the tall ships left Bermuda. It is a view of the Island that most people only get to see when an airplane is landing or leaving the Island - and then only for a few moments.

The photographer's assignment aboard the helicopter, brought in for three weeks by Pilot Michael Smatt, lasted 90 minutes and took in the whole Island.

“Everbody says Bermuda is another world and from 1,000 up it really is another world,” said Skinner who went up to update the newspaper's ariel files. He also obtained images of the Berkeley School project, the new stand at the National Stadium, the vacated baseslands at Southside and Morgan's Point and Daniel's Head.

“It's a shame there isn't a full time helicopter here, one for air-sea rescue but also to be able to take tourists up,” said the photographer.

Presently there are two helicopters on the Island, but the usage of them has been restricted to mostly commercial work by photographers such as Roland Skinner and Scott Stallard. Regular tours are not permitted because of restrictions. “Anybody who is bored with this Island should just go up for 20 minutes and have a look,” urged the photographer. “They will get a completely different appreciation of the Island's beauty.”

After he overcame the initial fear Skinner thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

“The only way to shoot pictures is you have to take the door off and you have a harness to let you lean out,” he explained.

“Once you start looking down on the Island you just forget all about it and you just keep shooting. This time I shot about 1,000 images and the good thing about this time is everything was shot on digital. When you put a roll of 36 in your camera you have to change the film, I just used two gigabyte cards, which holds about 600 images each.

“It was a 10-second switch compared to having to rewind film and missing pictures. The other problem is with all the roofs white it throws your exposure off, whereas in digital you can see right there what you have and adjust very quickly.”

From the air one can see both the beauty of the Island that cannot be appreciated from land, and also how developed the Island is.

“There is a lot of open land...golf courses and parks, but where there are houses there are a lot of them and they start blending into one big white blob after awhile,” said Skinner.

“Flying over certain areas there are just some amazing houses, and the amount of pools that we don't realise are there.

“The thing that struck me was the different shades of blue in the water, especially around islands where you have the shades of aqua, blues and greens and then it comes down to a dark, beautiful blue. That is what struck me most.”

With so many images when he returned, Skinner admits he did have a challenge trying to determine where the locations.

“You look for little landmarks that might jar your memory,” he says.

“Maybe Bermuda is being shot to death from the air, but I could do this for a living.”