Aerial photographer Denny Rowland is used to running risks as he navigates the skies capturing the world on camera.

He has risked his life many times to get the perfect picture for his clients.

While many of us spend our working lives behind an office desk, Denny's workplace is between 500ft and 12,000ft in the air.

He flies in close above hills and dales or zooms in to snap the rooftops of a town or city, an occupation which has a string of hazards.

Among his most terrifying moments was the day he came close to an airborne collision with two military jets as they darted at low altitudes on a training mission.

He and his co-pilot were busy keeping the plane on a steady trajectory to take a photograph of a hilly landscape when the jets came out of nowhere. They missed but Denny said the risk of flying near the ground was much higher than usual flights.

He said: "There has been a history of accidents in this line of work but I have been doing it a long time now and me and my team know what we're doing.

"What we do is more dangerous than just flying a plane but it is an exhilarating job to do."

Denny flies just above the legal minimum height and at much slower speeds than most planes in order to capture pictures for customers who commission him.

He ekes out a living taking pictures in his Stol, a military plane developed for war in the Eastern Bloc.

His plane, based at Shoreham airport, is adapted so he can take vertical photographs from the bottom of the craft and almost any other angle.

His work ranges from flying in low over yachts to capture international sailing races out at sea to zooming in on an individual building for development surveys for construction companies.

He has flown up and down the countryside taking pictures of rivers, sea defences and historic buildings.

Television companies and news agencies often enlist his services to fly over the scene of a major incident, including filming the wreckage of train crashes.

Many residents of Brighton and Hove will have seen Denny's crew flying above the beaches trailing an advertising banner.

Taking pictures in daylight is hard enough, especially when it is over rough and hilly terrain but Denny's speciality is taking pictures at night.

He has captured stunning images of Brighton and Hove and the Palace Pier using equipment he invented himself.

His gyro-stabilising camera mount allows him to take difficult shots opening his camera shutter for long exposures in the dark to create clear images despite the movement of the plane.

He said: "I have been doing this for ten years. It is very difficult to get the shots because you and the boats are moving.

"When you are looking through a telephoto lens from an aeroplane you are isolated and, when you get turbulence, you can feel a sense of weightlessness."