“I think I know Orange more now by air, a couple hundred feet up, than I do by the ground!” says professional drone photographer and videographer Troy Pearson.

In fact, we’d go so far as to say that there would be few people, if any, who have spent more time looking at Orange from the air than Troy has.

A long-time local and drone pilot for more than 15 years, Troy has logged up countless flights over the Colour City and has a library of thousands of photographs taken from the air.

Regular readers of Orange City Life would recognise many of Troy’s aerial photographs, which he has been kind enough to let us republish over the years.

And you will find countless more examples of his work on his ‘Eyetrix’ social media pages.

“Yeah, It's fairly spammed with nice sunsets or storm fronts coming in, shelf clouds building up and coming in over the mountain and over Orange,” says Troy, who can’t resist putting the drone up in his East Orange backyard when there’s a chance of capturing a good photo looking west of the CBD.

Being so familiar with the view from above, Troy was immediately drawn to a historic aerial photo he found shared on a local Facebook group. Taken by a reporter for the Daily Telegraph in 1932, the photo shows Summer Street, from the Five Ways looking west, in incredible detail.

“Straight away I recognise the angle,” says Troy, adding that it’s nearly identical to the view from above his own backyard.

“And I've always loved old photos, especially of where I'm from, and so I've always gone around and looked at where this was taken from and, sometimes, recreate them.”

It was Troy’s recent recreation of the 1932 aerial photo (pictured with this story) that caught our attention, but we became intrigued after discovering the lengths he goes to and the effort involved in matching an old image.

“A lot of people think you just get a camera and go out and take the photo, but it just doesn't look right, and I want it to look exact,” Troy explains.

“The cameras were different, had different aspect ratios… and the length of the lens.. I've had a few cracks at this. Several attempts since my first in 2016.”

Back then, Troy's drone camera had only a 24mm lens, which in most cases meant matching an old photo like this exactly was impossible.

“That's when I realised I've got to get the right lens length,” he says. “And once I worked out the lens length, it takes a few shots, but it becomes a lot easier, and you can spot it; you can see with your eye. Angles. The walls on the side of buildings. How much of a road you can see. It sort of gives you an idea.”

There is still, of course, the matter of working out the spot in the air a photo was shot from. was shot from.

“It's a good little brain challenge, that's for sure! And I love doing it,” says Troy, who hopes the photos he takes now may be found just as interesting 90 years into the future.

“I just get this real spark when I see an old photo of something in Orange. To see an old photo of the main street and see what it was like, you can get more of a feel for the atmosphere… you can almost smell the horses!

“So someone else in 90 years might have the same love of the game as I do and the same interest in how things change and what it looked like.

“That's why I want to do it, and that's why I have been doing it for nearly 20 years.”