It’s a flying boat, yes you read right a flying boat!

And the brains behind this whacky idea is not an aviator or an engineer, but a passionate Australian photographer.

37-year-old Ben Neale flew his boat – no that was not a typo – to take incredible aerial photos and footage of some unexplored areas of the Solomon Islands.

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 in the video 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.

Source: https://metro.co.uk/2022/06/18/photographer-flies-homemade-boat-over-solomon-islands-16851939/