About
Francis McCafferty.
An award-winning drone photographer based in Stirling, working the length of Scotland, who turned a lifetime behind a camera into the business this site is for.
Forty years of photography, and a drone.
I have loved photography for most of my life and shot it in every format going, film first and digital after. The drone is the newest part of it, and it changed what I could do with a country I already knew by heart.
Bannockburn puts me ten minutes from Stirling Castle and the Wallace Monument, and at the gateway to the Highlands. From here I cover the whole of Scotland: Glencoe and Rannoch Moor before dawn, the Kelpies and the Falkirk canals, the Forth bridges, the Trossachs, and whatever a commission asks for in between. Some mornings I drive two hours and come home with nothing. That is the job.
It is also, now, a business. What began as something I did for the love of it turned into work people pay for, and that is what Fly Caledonia is.
The recognition
Judged, published, and hung on a wall.
I would rather show you where the work has ended up than tell you it is good.
The Scots Magazine, the oldest magazine in the world still publishing, put an image of mine called “Iconic Engineering” into the final of its Photographer of the Year. It is the Forth bridges at dusk. Out of several hundred entries the panel cut it to a final fifteen and put those to a public vote of the readership.
Scottish Canals publish my Kelpies work to their channels and their ezine. The Scottish Banner, read by Scots in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA, runs my photographs most months. The National Wallace Monument's media team have featured the work. It has been exhibited in Stirling and Glasgow, including “Hope and Passion” with the Stirling Photography Festival.
- Scots Magazine Photographer of the Year 2020, finalist
- Published by Scottish Canals and The Scottish Banner
- Featured by The National Wallace Monument
- Exhibited in Stirling and Glasgow galleries
- CAA registered drone operator, renewed annually
- £5m public liability and £1m professional indemnity, through FPV UK
- SVQ National Certificate in Photography, Glasgow College
- Forth Valley College, portrait photography certificates
As featured in
Who I work for
The same drone, five different jobs.
The licence, the insurance and the eye do not change. What changes is who the photograph is for and what they need out of it.
Property & estate agents
Show the plot, the setting and the approach in one frame. Listings with aerials get looked at longer.
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Hotels, tourism & venues
The loch behind the hotel, the glen behind the cottage. The reason people book, in one shot.
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Weddings & events
The whole party, the whole venue, from above. I have shot weddings on the ground too.
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Construction & progress
Monthly progress sets from a fixed position, so the whole site is visible in one image.
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Landscape & editorial
Award-recognised aerial landscape work for publishers, tourism bodies and print.
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Commissions
Got something worth seeing from above?
Property, hotels, venues, construction, events, or a stretch of Scotland you want done properly. Tell me what you have in mind and I will tell you what it costs.