Photographer flies homemade boat over Solomon Islands

Anyone who has an Instagram account knows how important it is to get the right angle and lighting.

Well, photographer Ben Neale went a bit further than that – and for pretty noble reasons too.

The 37-year-old flew a dinghy – no that was not a typo – to take incredible aerial photos and footage of some unexplored areas of the Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific ocean.

Ben, from Queensland, Australia, shipped parts for the aircraft in from the US and put all 8,000 pieces together himself.

It took him a whole two months to finish the boat.

Despite not having any expertise in assembling aircraft, Ben ended up successfully building a boat that could fly up to 10,000 feet.

Ben put his flying boat onto a sailing boat to get it out to the water and then he took off from there.

He called the flying boat his aerial ‘photography platform’.

Ben was able to fly over the islands for a few hours before the weather forced him to land.

Incredible footage shows the colours of the sea and the islands under Ben.

Ben can be seen leaning over the edge of the boat to get photographs.

He has used the photos and the footage for Gallery Earth – a charity that sells photographs to raise funds for NGOs.

It comes after two men from Mono Island, part of the Solomon Islands, had to be saved after they became stranded at sea.

Experienced seaman Livae Nanjikana and Junior Qoloni set off in small motorboat in September last year to travel around 125 miles south to the town of Noro on New Georgia Island.

But they ended up being rescued off the coast of Papua New Guinea after drifting almost 300 miles from home.

The men survived by eating oranges they’d packed for the expedition and coconuts floating in the sea.

Bizarrely, they said the whole experience was a ‘nice break’.

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