Snapping pictures of the Pyramids

The Northern Advocate (Peter de Graaf)

It's not just what you know, it's who you know.

And knowing the right people certainly helped when a tiny Whangarei firm was hired to take aerial photos of the Egyptian pyramids.

Lawrence and Elaine Ross, of Kokopu, are the Northland franchise holders for aerial photography company Skyworks.

Mostly they use a blimp - a 6m-long helium-filled balloon, like the Hindenburg in miniature - to photograph homes for real estate adverts.

The biggest thing they've photographed so far is the Kerikeri Bypass, the fancy new road that diverts traffic away from New Zealand's oldest buildings.

But, come April 2, they'll be snapping history on an altogether different scale when they float their blimp and remote-controlled camera over the 4500-year-old pyramids at Giza, Egypt.

Their unusual business opportunity came about when former Whangarei man Martin Van Rijswijk - now principal of the New Cairo British International School in the Egyptian capital - was looking for someone to photograph the school's 30th anniversary celebrations at the pyramids.

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