When photographing Czech aerobatics and fighter pilot Martin Šonka recently, photographer Dan Vojtěch wanted to capture the plane in a different light than other photographers have done in the past. He then decided that he would shoot the plane in motion, but light it like he would a studio photo using flashes firing around it.
This is impressive: photographer and aspiring astronaut Trevor Mahlmann was sitting in the seat of an airplane at 40,000 feet this past Tuesday when he managed to plan and shoot this stacked long-exposure photo showing the International Space Station whizzing by.
Some drone operator gave a pilot a scare this past Tuesday after flying the quadcopter way too close to an airport. A Virgin America flight reportedly came within 200 feet of the drone while landing at Dallas Love Field airport. To put that distance in perspective, consider this: the Airbus A319 airplane involved has a wingspan of about 117 feet.
American and European regulations generally prohibit pilots from taking pictures while flying planes, and for good reason: sometimes the camera does get in the way of safe flight -- literally.
An investigation in the UK has found that a military airliner took a terrifying 4,400 foot nosedive last year after the pilot's DSLR got stuck next to the plane's joystick.
On May 31st, 2014, a small Cessna plane crashed in a field a few miles away from Denver, killing its pilot and passenger. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) just published a report with findings from its investigation, concluding that the crash was most likely caused by the pilot becoming disoriented while taking selfies of himself.
Check out this crazy self-portrait photo by a guy named Timothy LaBranche. It's a composite image showing LaBranche posing as all 100 passengers in the cabin of a passenger plane.
A new FAA report is confirming what we imagine many responsible camera drone enthusiasts fear: the number of idiotic drone pilots is on the rise, and they're threatening to ruin it for everyone or, far worse, cause a full-scale air disaster.
Here's an interesting idea for the next time you find yourself stuck on a long, overnight flight. If you don't have the opportunity to capture the Aurora Borealis, try to capture star trails instead.
When we finally build a warp drive (or, you know, whenever the aliens see fit to give us one), this time-lapse is what we imagine a warp-speed airport would look like in real-time. Planes blasting away to our outposts in Andromeda, leaving long streaks of light in their wake.
But until then, we'll just have to be content with this beautiful time-lapse in which Milton Tan gives us an incredibly close look at the comings and goings at Singapore Changi Airport... like restricted area close.
If you've ever shot on-location somewhere far away, you probably had to make this tough decision: what gear do I take and what do I leave at the studio? For big photo shoots you'd rather err on the side of caution and take it all, but airline luggage allowances make that impossible... or do they?
It turns out that some airlines have a special policy that allows media professionals to pack a whole lot more gear.
We've seen spectacular city tour hyperlapses, and creative hyperlapses created using Google Street View images, but until today, we had never seen a trans-Pacific hyperlapse that put us right in the driver's seat (pilot's seat?) of a Boeing 747.
One of the standard cliché Instagram shots that gets ridiculed on occasion is the plane wing photographs, usually accompanied by some clouds or a sunrise or sunset. And while we agree that taking a photo out the window of your commercial airplane is tacky and overdone, the photo above by astrophotographer Alessandro Merga is a big fat beautiful exception.
Update: The original version of this post quoted a flight attendant in the intro, when it was in fact the author's girlfriend who made the remark that he was annoying people. This was an editorial mistake on our part, and has been fixed.
"The sound of your shutter clicking is annoying the people around you." said my girlfriend, sitting next to me. "I know," I replied "I don't care at the moment, I'm shooting some crazy unique footage!"
Last week I was lucky enough to shoot the world's first sunset hyperlapse sequence from an airplane, here's how I did it.
On December 11th, Ferdinand Puentes captured many people's worst nightmare on video: his plane making an emergency water landing.
Puentes enjoys capturing takeoffs and landings, and so his GoPro was already rolling on that fateful day when something very bad happened to the single engine of the small plane in which he was a passenger.
Who says you need to travel to exotic locations to capture the aurora borealis in action? Sometimes, all you need is a window seat on a trans-Atlantic flight from London to NYC -- at least that's what happened for one lucky amateur photographer recently when he was treated to one heck of an 'in-flight movie' right outside his airplane window.
For as long as most of us can remember, the pre-takeoff safety briefing given in airplanes worldwide always included something to the effect of "all electronics must be turned off and stowed during takeoff and landing." For photographers, that meant lost photo opportunities unless you were willing to break the rules to get a great shot.
The rules might say to keep your electronics stowed during takeoff and landing, but sometimes, you just can't help yourself. And even though we certainly don't condone breaking FAA regulations, the above photograph is a prime example of one of those times when not being able to help yourself pays off.
Taken by photographer James Kastner, the snap beautifully captures the sun glinting off the One World Trade Center just as the glare on the harbor aligned with Liberty Island. It's no wonder the shot has gone viral.
They're some of the most dramatic photographic documents of air combat in World War I, showing planes diving at each other, crashing in flames and pilots ejecting. And they're all completely bogus.
That hasn't stopped the work of Wesley David Archer from becoming famous and somewhat coveted, as attested by an upcoming Australian auction of his images.
The San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is one of the world's 30 busiest airports. The "gateway to the Pacific," as it is sometimes called, handled over 44 million passengers last year alone, and it was even the subject of its own short-lived television series back in the 1970s.
Given its scale and the sheer amount of air traffic that goes through there, YouTube user craigiest decided to give us a glimpse of the airport's comings and goings by shooting the above time-lapse.
When it comes to aerial photography, things are getting more and more complicated. Setting up a drone business in the US is getting to be a major headache in some states, and other options (e.g. paragliding) might just get you arrested if you fly over the wrong thing or take off from the wrong place.
AirCam is a solution, albeit an expensive one, that frees serious aerial photographers to do their thing -- and do it in style.
The media has been dominated by coverage of Asiana Airlines Flight 214's crash landing in San Francisco this past weekend. What's interesting is that some of the most powerful photographs showing the aftermath were not captured by professional photojournalists, but rather those with the most access to the site: US government employees.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has become a person of extreme interest in recent days, but thus far he's managed to avoid photojournalists' cameras fairly well. The same cannot be said of the empty airplane seat which was supposedly going to take him from Russia to Cuba this past weekend.
In an airplane full of disappointed photojournalists, the conspicuously vacant Seat 17A became in short order the most photographed empty airplane seat in the world.
Karim Nafatni has a view of the world that most other photography enthusiasts don't have. When he's not scouring the Dubai landscape for sweeping architectural photographs, Nafatni is often tens of thousands of feet in the air, working in the cockpit of large jetliners as a pilot for a major airline.
"Aerialscapes" is a series of photographs by German photographer Jakob Wagner that was shot from the sky. The images in the project are sweeping landscapes of various locations around the world, showing formations that are both manmade and natural.
There are a few reason why some of us fight over who gets the window seat on airplanes, and the view that Tim Sessler captured in his mesmerizing short film "Drift" tops that list. While on a flight from San Francisco to Philadelphia (with a layover in Salt Lake City) Sessler pulled out his 5D MarK III and shot some of the stunning vistas outside his airplane window.
When people test cameras and lenses for resolution, they commonly use special resolution test charts that are filled with black bars of varying lengths and thicknesses. They're kind of like eye charts, except for cameras instead of eyeballs, and with lines instead of letters.
Well, did you know that in dozens of locations around the United States, there are gigantic resolution test charts on the ground?
Check out this curious 25-second time-lapse/composite video that shows every airplane that landed at San Diego International Airport on Black Friday a week ago between 10:30am and 3pm. The giant planes whiz by overhead as if they're part of a fighter jet squadron heading off to battle -- not something you'd expect to see with commercial planes at an airport. It was created by photography and film professor Cy Kuckenbaker.
Martin of Cargospotter created this mesmerizing time-lapse video showing the constant stream of airplanes that land on a particular runway at London's Heathrow airport, the third busiest airport in the world in terms of passengers (Atlanta Airport tops that list -- did you know that?). The still photographs he captured are played back 17-times faster than real-time, causing the planes to look like RC airplanes floating around and bobbing in the breeze.
You've probably heard people say that you should keep your camera gear with you at all times when flying, as there are multiple points in the travel process at which your valuable equipment could get stolen or damaged. In case you're not convinced, check out the video above showing an investigative report that ABC News recently did.
To test airports that have a history of theft, Brian Ross of ABC's The Blotter left 10 iPads inside the plastic bins at security checkpoints. At 9 out of 10 airports, the screeners followed protocol and immediately contacted the owner using the contact info prominently displayed on the iPad. In the 10th case, an agent was filmed taking the iPad out of the bin before it vanished.
You've probably seen time-lapse videos shot looking out the side of an airplane through a passenger window, but have you ever seen one from the pilot's point of view? If not, check out the beautiful video above. It was created by pilot Jakub Vlk, who brought his Canon 600D to work and captured photographs across seven days. The video shows Vlk taxiing to the runway, taking off, floating up into the clouds, flying around, and landing.
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Alex MacLean is a Massachusetts-based photographer and pilot who uses his dual interests to create epic aerial photographs.
Alex MacLean has flown his plane over much of the United States documenting the landscape. Trained as an architect, he has portrayed the history and evolution of the land from vast agricultural patterns to city grids, recording changes brought about by human intervention and natural processes. His powerful and descriptive images provide clues to understanding the relationship between the natural and constructed environments.
Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style is a spontaneous portrait project that photographer Nina Katchadourian started while traveling by plane in 2010.
Maho Beach outside of Princess Juliana International Airport in Sint Maarten is famous for the fact that landing airplanes fly overhead at minimal altitude. It's one of the only places in the world where airplanes can be viewed in their flightpath just outside the end of the runway, and therefore is very popular with tourists and plane spotters. Austrian photographer Josef Hoflehner has a project titled "Jet Airliner" that consists of photos of massive jet airliners hovering over the heads of sunbathers on the beach.
Aviation photographer Justin de Reuck has an awesome job: rather than do photo …
Earlier this month we shared some advice from an anonymous airline baggage handler, who revealed that hard-sided …
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Photographer Edouard Janssens recently sent a weather balloon equipped with a Sony NEX-5 …
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