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Company offers an aerial glimpse into the past

Homestead Aerial Photo, a company based out of Calgary, will be making a stop in Estevan on Oct. 9 and 10 at the Estevan Shoppers Mall.
Homestead Aerial
Pictured is one out of the aerial photographs which are a part of the archival library which Homestead Aerial Photos has acquired since the early 1950s. Photo submitted

Homestead Aerial Photo, a company based out of Calgary, will be making a stop in Estevan on Oct. 9 and 10 at the Estevan Shoppers Mall.

According to owner Kim Bessette, the company specializes in aerial photography of farms and homesteads throughout the country, with a library of over 1 million photos, which date back as far as 1953.

“This library was shot fully on speculation that people would want aerial photos of their farms,” said Bessette. “It was originally based out of Edmonton in the 1950s, and they would spend the summer months shooting aerial photos of the farms, and then spend the winters going farm to farm, trying to sell photos to farm owners as family keepsakes.”

Bessette and his wife purchased the company in 1993, and since then have focused largely on the archived photos, although they do continue to shoot new photos as well.

“We’ve got about 1 1/2 million photos in stock, and it allows us to help people find the original aerial photos of farms that may still be there, or might not exist anymore,” said Bessette.

The photos were largely shot by the company’s original owner, who began shooting the photos using a handheld 35millimetre camera, shooting from an airplane. He later transitioned to a mid-format camera sometime around 1957, which greatly increased the size and quality of the negatives of the photographs, according to Bessette.

“Because there was no flight restrictions set on the planes when these photos were shot, you can really get an amazing amount of detail because the plane was able to fly so low. Sometimes you’ll be able to see horses in the field, or people waving in the front yard. We’ve even had people point out horses in pictures that they still remember the names of. There are a lot of memories connected to these images,” said Bessette

“A lot of these photos were just put into storage, and no one really knew about them because at the time the company just continued shooting new photos. Our goal was to try and get them out of storage and reconnect the photos to the people who lived or still are living on these farms.”

According to Bessette, people who are interested in the photos have widely varying reasons behind their interest.

“People buy photos like these to kind of see the changes that have happened to their properties over the years. But my age range of customers is kind of all over the map,” said Bessette.

“Younger people come looking for photos of where their parents or grandparents might have grown up, or maybe for keepsakes, but we’ve also had people come to us for different reasons. We’ve had people ask for photos for insurance purposes, for water drainage solutions on their land, and we’ve even had people approach us for divorce reasons or locating grave sites, so the photos can really be used for a variety of reasons.”

Homestead Aerial will be making stops in several communities in southeast Saskatchewan next month.

“We’ve actually got quite a few shows in the area,” said Bessette. “We’ll be in Weyburn, Carlyle, Lampman, Oxbow, Carnduff, Redvers, we’ll be going all over. It’s a lot of work to actually load these proofs up from our office in Calgary and go on the road. So we will do these small town shows every once in a while, and we keep the displays quite simple so that they are easy to set up and tear down and continue on to the next stop.”

Those who are interested in purchasing photos of their land, or inquiring about photos Bessette may have in his library, are asked to contact him prior to the tour.

“If anyone is interested in looking for some photos of their land, we recommend they contact us before we come for the show, because of the size of the prints we obviously cant bring them all with us, so if they contact us ahead of time we can make sure to bring the prints they are looking for,” said Bessette

Homestead Aerial will be in Radville Oct. 11, Weyburn Oct. 12 – 13, Carlyle Oct. 15, Redvers Oct. 16, Oxbow Oct. 17, Carnduff Oct.18, and Lampman Oct. 19.

Visit www.homesteadaerial.com for more information, or look for Homestead Aerial on Facebook.