iPhone Saves The Day

The title may seem a tad excessive, but I assure you its not!

I had an assignment near Bristol a few days ago, involving a portrait of someone and several thousand trees they had planted. The best way to illustrate this was to get the subject in a helicopter and photograph them with the landscape below.

Photo taken in the air on the iPhone

I got onto the helicopter and we made our way to the subject's farm. As we got close to the town, the pilot realised that there didn't seem to be a grid reference for the location of the farm (although he did have one for the second location where the trees were).  Now anyone who has the slightest idea how expensive helicopters are to hire will begin to feel my panic!

I had a brain wave (instead of a heart attack) and got out my iPhone. Started up Google Maps and hit search, which found us (I have yet to see a faster moving icon!!). After typing in the postcode to the farm it showed that we weren't too far away and we managed to locate the correct field and land in it, just by following our location in relation to our destination on the iPhone's screen. Phew, the job was saved!

Now I've often resorted to using my iPhone when my car's built in and rather expensive Sat Nav fails to find where I want to go, have also used it when on foot, and even used it for cab drivers who get lost, but never in a million years did I think I'd use it in the air!

Update: Good news folks. The iPhone V3.0 software has just been announced by Apple and its now got the facility for developers to write "turn by turn" Sat Nav Apps for it; Tom Tom, bring it on!!