The objective of this research is to investigate the potential of relational matching in one of the fundamental photogrammetric processes, that is initial approximation problem. The automatic relative orientation procedures of aerial stereopairs have been investigated. The fact that the existing methods suffer from approximations, distortions (geometric and radiometric), occlusions, and breaklines is the motivation to investigate relational matching which appears to be a much more general solution. An elegant way of solving the initial approximation problem by using distinct(special) relationship from relational description is suggested and experimented. As for evaluation function, the cost function was implemented. The detection of erroneous matching is incorporated as a part of proposed relational matching scheme. Experiments with real urban area images where large numbers of repetitive patterns, breaklines, and occluded areas are present prove the feasibility of implementation of the proposed relational matching scheme. The investigation of relational matching in the domain of image matching problem provides advantages and disadvantages over the existing image matching methods and shows the future area of development and implementation of relational matching in the field of digital photogrammetry.