How a Portchester photographer rose to fame with his helicopter aerial shots of Portsmouth and beyond

Whether that be 1,000 feet above a built up area of Portsmouth or hovering even higher to photograph Southsea Pier, Chris Brunnen won’t let perching in a doorless helicopter scare him from doing what he does best.

Having worked in design and photography since he left Portsmouth College in his 20s, Chris is no stranger to throwing himself into the unknown.

In 1987, Chris agreed to his first aerial job for Tandem Advertising in Chichester, despite having never done anything like it before.

A professional commercial photographer by trade, he’d designed brochures for businesses wanting to promote their products, produced a portfolio’s worth of work in studio photography and taken every chance he got to photograph locations that enthralled him.

But it’s aerial photography that propelled him to success, recognition and popularity in Portsmouth and beyond.

‘After working at a small firm for five years producing brochures, some changes in the company prompted me to start my own business,’ says Chris, who’s owned CJB Photography at Portchester for 36 years.

‘After a couple of years, I worked for other design and advertising agencies.

‘One was a company in Chichester who I had done a few jobs for in the studio. One of their clients was IBM at Havant.

‘They asked if I did aerial work. There was only one answer to that.

‘I said, "I'm sure I could do that".

Keen for a new challenge, Chris flipped through Yellow Pages – there was no internet at this time – and stumbled on a helicopter company at Goodwood.

‘They gave me a few pointers about taking the doors off to give a clear area to shoot out of,’ explains the 62-year-old.

‘I gave [my client] some prices for taking photos of the IBM plant.

‘But there was a minimum charge for the helicopter and it wasn't going to take that long. I asked to up the rest of my minimum charge to do a quick tour of Portsmouth so I could build up a portfolio to show people.

‘I did the job then came along to Portsmouth along the coast and did all the crowd pleasers like South Parade Pier and Clarence Pier, various other places around the city and used that portfolio to tell other people I could do aerial photographs.

‘At the time there was only one person I knew doing it.

‘It was exhilarating. It's quite good fun and draughty. I can't say I was scared by it, I quite enjoyed it.’

Fast forward to today and Chris boasts a huge portfolio of aerial shots ranging from Clarence Parade and Southsea Pier to Hilsea Lido, Gosport, Waterlooville and Portsmouth city centre.

Hundreds of his mounted prints have been sold to clients.

He now sells puzzles of his aerial shots at craft fairs and markets as well as self-published books on his work, including Portsmouth, an Aerial Tour Through Time.

But it hasn’t always been plain sailing. Chris’ daredevil antics had humble beginnings.

Chris was born without a hand, which he says there was ‘no real explanation for’ and has lived with a bionic arm for most of his life.

He studied at the City of Portsmouth Boys’ School, now Trafalgar School at Hilsea, where he found himself being name-called and teased ‘relentlessly’.

‘It never really concerned me enough to find out why or how it happened,’ he explains.

‘But I suppose it’s made me more resilient at a person to being teased because it was pretty relentless through school, especially a boys’ school. Kids can be really horrible.

‘It's difficult to know if it's affected my life. I'm sure it has. But I haven’t known any different.’

For Chris, missing part of a limb is just a part of who he is and it’s never stopped his from achieving his dream as a commercial photographer.

His interest in cameras started when he was 12.

Chris says: ‘I got into photography due to my next-door neighbour, Neil.

‘He was a couple of years older than me and we used to chat over the fence. One day, he came home with this brown envelope which he shoved through the trellis over the top of the fence and said, “this is what I did today”.

‘I pulled out some black and white photographs which he’d taken at school and I was completely blown away because at that time photography was still very much done in dark rooms and on film.

‘The whole concept of taking a picture and getting it on to a piece of paper baffled me.

‘It was a light bulb moment. The moment I saw them, I thought “I want to do this”.’

Neil’s mother worked in a chemist and knew how to load the Kodak Brownie camera Chris’ mum had since given him to play with.

‘We would set up scenes in the garden and photograph them,’ laughs Chris.

‘We even re-created the moon landing with my Action Man toys and Neil would take the films to school to process them’ – one of which has since earned its place in one of Chris’ books.

Chris went on to study O-lLevel photography at school, where he met his technical drawing teacher Mr Bramble, who he has since collaborated with in his ‘then and now’ photography book after discovering they had both taken pictures of similar places over the years.

He then studied graphic design at Portsmouth College of Art but found himself spending most of his time in the studios and dark rooms of the photography department next door.

‘The first book came about because I'd seen various old photographs on Facebook,’ Chris explains.

‘I'd gone through an archive of mine and found one that matched and it was spookily frequent.’

With the advent of the internet Chris found his old teacher’s works. He explains: ‘It appears that both Jim and I share a passion for aerial photography. I only took a quick look through Jim’s online gallery at the time, but soon found that we had photographed many of the same places, and the idea of putting something together to compare these ‘then and now’ photographs came to mind.

‘Many years later I came across one of his shots on social media and somebody who knew Jim personally and it went from there.’

Chris’ story is proof that despite living with a bionic arm, nothing will stop him from heading a successful commercial photography businesses.

And some of his work is not too dissimilar to the types of shots he was taking all those years ago when he was a boy experimenting with his action man.

‘What I'm doing now in the studio is creating little sets of people's products and lighting it and taking pictures to make that product look good for their catalogues or brochures.

‘Over the years I've built up quite a library. [Aerial photography] is quite exciting even now. The novelty has not worn off. The whole procedure, briefing the pilot, planning your route, getting permission if necessary and then getting wrapped up warm because it can be pretty cold with no doors on a helicopter in February. It’s amazing.’