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aerial photography

Photographing the Royal Air Force jets from the air on film in 1977

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With today’s technology, shooting photos from the air is simple. Send up a drone, and you’re good to go. When drones can’t keep up, there are other methods. Attaching remote control cameras to planes and helicopters has been possible for a while. 40 years ago, though, in 1977, the world was still on film. If you couldn’t see through the viewfinder, you were essentially shooting blind.

There are a great many challenges to getting shots like this with no remote control and no view of what you’re shooting. Photographer Richard Cooke took these challenges to the extreme to photograph the Royal Air Force’s Red Arrows display team. Now he’s telling the tale of how these images came to be, and the techniques involved to create them.

Pilot captures amazing photos of storms from his cockpit

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I sometimes think how awesome it must be for pilots if they love photography. And an Ecuador-based pilot and photographer Santiago Borja Lopez proves me right. He captures night skies from his Boeing 767, and sometimes, these images involve lightning bolts and incredible storms. The sky from an airplane is magnificent on its own, but if you add lightning bolts above the clouds to that picture – you’ll get something completely astounding.

This photographer creates warped landscapes like you’ve never seen before

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When you are an artist, only your imagination is the limit. With modern technology, you can create pretty much anything you can imagine. And Turkish photographer Aydın Büyüktaş is a living example of this. His vivid imagination, inspired by sci-fi and technical books, resulted in a fantastic series of unordinary landscapes called Flatland II. And “unordinary” may be an understatement. His images show warped reality, landscapes without horizons that seem like they’re wrapping around you. You will feel like you’re watching a sci-fi movie or riding a rollercoaster in another dimension.

Improve your aerial footage by learning your drone’s intelligent flight modes

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Shooting quality aerial video is the main reason that most people get a drone like the DJI Phantom 4 Pro. So, when your footage doesn’t look that great, it’s a bit of a disappointment. Often, though, the problem is simply down to not understanding how your drone works, and the different flight modes it offers.

In this video, drone enthusiast Billy Kyle takes us to drone flight school to teach us all about the twelve intelligent flight modes offered by the Phantom 4 Pro. If you have a Phantom 4, Mavic Pro or earlier drone, it’s still worth having a watch. Even though all of the flight modes might not be available to you, the ones you do have access to are probably mentioned. It also serves as a good reference for what it can do if you’re considering buying, too.

Watch: passenger opens a tiny plane window to take a photo, camera flies right out

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When you fly by airplane, bringing the camera with you is a must. How else would you capture magnificent aerial scenes on such height? But would you ever say you could lose a camera through an airplane window? I thought it was impossible, but then I saw this video. It’s only a bit heartbreaking, but most of all – it’s pretty hilarious.

Dramatic drone photos show a difference between the rich and the poor

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No matter where you live, it can be difficult to clearly see differences between the communities. But when you rise above it (literally), you can see just how many discrepancies there are in the same city, even in a very small space. And more than that, you see how clearly people are divided. South African photographer Johnny Miller creates aerial images that show inequality, differences and separation within the same town. Sometimes, it’s only one thin line that separates two entirely opposite communities.

Selfly camera drone: it ups your selfie game and fits in your pocket

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If you think selfie sticks are so 2014, here’s something to up your selfie game. Now you can take aerial selfies using an autonomous flying camera which you can always carry with you. It’s called Selfly and it snaps of your phone when you want to use it. When you’re done shooting, you simply attach it back to the phone case and put it in your pocket. So, it’s a gadget that allows you to take selfies from a new perspective, and to annoy people around you in a completely new way.

Drone the World: pay a professional drone photographer to capture your travel memories

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When I first saw a selfie stick, I thought it was quite a strange way of capturing travel memories. And now I’ve discovered another quite unusual way of doing this – and a more expensive one. A London-based company Black Tomato offers you a service of hiring a professional drone photographer. He or she will capture your holiday memories and “take your travel experience to the new heights”.

From zero to drone in one hour is MIT’s vision for drone building

Have you ever had a problem finding a drone that suits all your needs? If this is the case, then a group of MIT’s students has the invention which could solve your problem. Thanks to their interactive program, it may soon be possible for everyone to build their own drone, even without any technical background.

Digitizing large format aerial photography film transparencies

One of the challenges (and rewards) of managing a digital production lab for a university research library is working with the wide assortment of analog formats that are collected within its archives, special collections, and map library holdings. For instance, we’ve recently begun conversion work on a 2002 aerial survey of Connecticut that was originally shot on 9″x9″ positive black and white film.

Aerial photo transparencies are commonly turned into contact prints soon after the film is developed. And indeed, we have a large collection of these prints that we’ve digitized over the years at UConn. This type of reflective media can be converted in a couple of ways: you can either scan, or digitally photograph the prints at a sufficient spatial resolution. The Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) suggest 6,000 pixels across the long dimension of the image area.

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