"To see the world from a drone would be a beautiful thing to do"

Sunday 01 April 2018

With a career in Jersey’s Fire and Rescue Service spanning almost three decades, Marc Le Cornu certainly has a head for heights. But his new adventure has taken it to another level – quite literally.

As the driving force behind introducing drone use within the island’s emergency services, he’s now combined his piloting skills and love of photography and launched ‘Bam Perspectives’, his own aerial imagery company.

But despite his new business still being very much in its infancy, projects with big name clients are already filling up his 2018 calendar. Express met Marc to get a better view on the life of a drone pilot...

The job of a fire fighter has certainly changed over the years – it’s no longer dominated by the clichéd image of rescuing cats stuck up trees and squirting fires with water – they now use the latest technology to detect missing people, and search hard-to-reach areas with two specialist drones, one of which has thermal imaging – an initiative that was spearheaded by station commander Marc Le Cornu, after he formed the Joint Emergency Services Aerial Reconnaissance Team in 2015.

“I could immediately see that was going to be a massive benefit to us, having the ability to see incidents from above. You can see so much stuff that you wouldn’t normally see from inside [a building on fire]. You can see where the fire is spreading to, you can see where the radiant heat is impinging on neighbouring buildings, if other buildings are at risk.”

Pictured: Marc formed the Joint Emergency Services Aerial Reconnaissance Team in 2015.

Although helpful in fires, the drone technology has proved vital in missing person incidents including one of Jersey’s biggest search operations to date -  hunting for Adrian Lynch – where Marc essentially ‘learnt his trade’ as he was out using the technology for 10 days in a row, having only just received the drones a fortnight before the 20-year-old went missing.

“We found the amazing capability it gave us. Although we haven’t directly found a missing person, what we have been able to do is confirm to the police that an area they want to search is clear. We’re able to keep the searching teams safe, so we don’t have to risk people climbing around cliffs, searching for somebody they consider is in the area. We can fly a drone in and around that area and confirm there’s nobody around, it’s all about making our emergency response safer, as well as achieving the task.”

Although there can be an element of sadness to many of the situations Marc is called to, he discovered a beautiful side to his job as a drone pilot. “Every time I was up in the air with the drone I was coming to realise that it was a completely different perspective on the island. It didn’t matter whether we were training or out on a search, every time I was looking down I was seeing things I’ve never seen before, and that different angle on things you are looking at is just really cool. I know there’s only a few other guys out there doing commercial drone piloting, so I thought this is something that potentially would be nice to get into. At first I thought it would just be a nice hobby, to buy my own drone and go around taking photos of things, and see what that looks like.”

Pictured: Plemont is one of Marc's favourite places to capture from a different perspective.

So that’s exactly what Marc did last summer. His hobby uncovered many sides of the island that the Jerseyman had never seen before, like the remote caves by Plémont, so he decided to share them online on Twitter and Facebook, but mainly Instagram.

 “I’m a big user of social media so I started pumping out some of my stuff on social media and I was getting some amazing feedback from people, including drone pilots from around the world, and so I thought ‘ok, maybe this is something I should look at.’ My whole drive initially was just to share the stuff I was seeing that people wouldn’t normally see, so to now be able to do that, and make it a sort of part-time job is fantastic. The initial idea was to just make a bit of extra money to go skiing every year, as obviously the fire service is my day job, that’s my career, and this is something to help out and move along, and I’m just seeing it grow and grow.”

Being a drone photographer is a world away from the youngster who once dreamed of being a professional basketball player; but the skills he’s developed from the basketball scholarship - which took him to Kentucky in the USA for a year when he was 18 - gave Marc the fitness to get into the Fire Service. His early career working in an architect’s office is also a major influence in his new business, as Marc has provided aerial images for construction companies.

“There so many angles drones can be used to assist with, whether its inspecting buildings after storms; if you think of roof damage, at the moment you are probably going to need to get scaffolding up to inspect a roof that would be really costly - where I can turn up with a drone, fly over and take a number of photos and then we can analyse that afterwards and really zoom into the different areas.”

Pictured: Marc will soon be purchasing a new drone to upgrade his current one.

And it’s not just storm damage Marc is helping construction companies with. His work is being used to help create new developments, inspect sites and carry out risk assessments - something Marc has a lot of experience with from his time in the fire service. “My whole life exists around risk assessment and therefore that is a massive part of being a commercial drone pilot, being able to risk assess everything you do because you’ve got a big lump of plastic in the sky – that’s a lot of issues it can cause: obviously anything colliding with it in the air, or if it falls out of the sky and comes down, what it will do when it does. It’s about being able to control the environment you are in and understanding the risks and trying to bring all those risks down to as low as possible.”

Marc also has to work within a number of safety regulations as well as those respecting people’s privacy.  

Marc’s work has also been commissioned for government use, including the British-Irish Council summit which was attended by the Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, hosted by Jersey last November, and more recently a competition for pupils of d’Auvergne School. He’s also done work for tourism campaigns, PR companies and charities including Trees for Life. Work is coming in so thick and fast that Mark is now buying a new drone to update the one he originally bought to fulfil a hobby.

“Purchasing a drone initially, I only had a relatively small budget so I’ve got a drone currently that is really capable with a great camera, and very portable - but I already can see that’s not enough, because especially the way 2018 has started with the weather (we’ve got wind issues); so I’m about to purchase another drone to step it up and give me more capability in wind, so that’s a really important part of it. The technology there is just amazing what you can do with the cameras – being able to shoot at high definition images and 4K video footage - just gives that ability to provide clips for pretty much anything.

“When you have such an amazing island like we do with some incredible scenery, some amazing heritage buildings that just look completely different from above, it’s just so great to add that drama from above and get that perspective of where it is.

“I’m always trying to get that different angle, something really different and that’s something the drone gives automatically - but again there’s another element to it, turning it into an abstract image just from the way nature is, but showing it in that different perspective is not something I’m seeing much of locally, so I’m trying to use it that way.”

Although Marc self-taught himself how to set up his own website and use editing software like Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, he needed help with creating a business plan. “Being able to speak to people like Jersey Business was really useful, they gave me some great advice. I’ve got some friends that I work with - certainly from a coaching perspective - that have really helped me manage the resilience around being able to do it all, run two jobs at the same time; that is a real help.

“The [setting up] process is relatively easy, if you know what to do so it is all about speaking to people, doing the research and putting that together and for me, at the moment, it’s a lot about baby steps. Being able to understand how much I can accommodate is really important for me, so I’ve got a business plan for a number of sectors of the market that I want to approach. But again it’s all about baby steps, working through that to see what I can and can’t do.

“It is absolutely non-stop! When I’m not at work I am either flying (if weather allows) or I’m editing. As soon as I come home from work I’m generally editing photos, editing video and trying to come up with something ‘new and different’ - sharing that on social media, responding to people that make comments, as I think if people go out their way to make a comment on one of my images it’s nice to talk back to them.

“Juggling what I do is a challenge but it’s a challenge that I’m really enjoying, and to see an idea that I once had, now become reality and being used by people is so exciting and rewarding. I now do two really rewarding jobs and I’m really lucky. There’s probably no more rewarding job than the fire and rescue service but this is getting close.”

Marc would love for ‘Bam Perspectives’ to become his full-time job when he retires from the Fire Service, and hopes the sky really will be the limit. “I’ve not done a full year yet, I’ve only done five months operating a business, and those five months have been through the winter, so obviously for a drone pilot the summer is where the best shots are going to come, and the best weather we are going to have, so it will be really interesting to see how that goes through the summer as well.

“You see all the national geographic and the David Attenborough programmes all done by drone now; that would be amazing…to see the world from a drone would be a beautiful thing to do, but yeah that’s a big long term target!”

This interview features in the latest edition of Connect magazine here.