A fun assignment for a Bath Chronicle photographer, 500ft above the city, has given the paper a boost in circulation and revenue.

Staff photographer Sam Farr took to the skies in a hot air balloon to capture more than a 1,000 birds eye views of the area for a special ‘Bath From the Air’ supplement.

And the stunning pictures proved so popular that the paper saw a 4.5 per cent sales increase on the day the supplement was published, and took £2,000 in photosales in the first two weeks.

For Sam, producing the supplement meant four trips in a balloon with pilot Ray Shortall, in a bid to cover the whole of the city.

Sam said: “I managed to get pictures of about 80 per cent of Bath, and ended up with about 1,000 pictures which had to be edited down to 250 for the supplement.

“You have no control over where you fly, so we had to take off from different places, depending on the wind direction and where you wanted to go.

“The balloon was slow and gentle and gave me chance to get my bearings – the hardest part was doing the captions as you have to know Bath really well.”

The assignment also earned Sam the Chronicle’s monthly newsroom award for ‘most useful person’ (his third this year!) and a bottle of champagne.

Sam said: “I did all the flying in my own time, but I’m more of a cider drinker so I gave the champagne to the sub who had the job of putting the supplement together!”

Readers are also being given the chance to order prints of the photos, or have them printed onto mugs, T-shirts or mouse mats.

Circulation director Mark Stroud said: “Photosales have been extremely good, and have created a lot of interest from people who have spotted their house, or their parents house, workplace or school.

“We’ve also been printing 25 per cent off coupons which readers have to collect, which has been boosting.

“We’ve done similar supplements such as first day in class and Christmas nativity, but this has been our best yet and orders are still coming in.”

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