These Drone Selfies Were Inspired by Inception

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After seeing the trailer for Inception years ago, photographer Patrick Gilbert of North Bay, Ontario, recently decided to recreate the surreal “folding landscapes” in a series of drone selfies. The project is titled #BendNorthBay.

Gilbert says his goal was to capture a unique view of his small town that’s different from the standard aerial drone photo, featuring different parts of North Bay in a fun and special way.

“These images are a lot more work than just going up at the right time of day and grabbing a quick shot while the light is nice,” Gilbert tells PetaPixel. “Each one is a collage of 3-6 individual photos captured at different heights and angles, then stitched together and modified to make everything come together as smoothly and naturally as possible.”

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“Part of the fun is that I’m learning more with each image I create, about which types of locations work best, time of day that works best, specific heights and angles of shots that work best depending on the size of the objects in the scene, etc…” Gilbert says.

All the photos were captured using a DJI Phantom 3 Pro, and the editing was done in Adobe Photoshop.

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You can follow along with this ongoing project on the #BendNorthBay website. You can also find more of Gilbert’s work on his website, Vimeo, Facebook, and Instagram.


Update: As commenters have pointed out below, we featured a non-selfie version of this concept by photographer Aydın Büyüktaş back in January 2016.


Image credits: Photographs by Patrick Gilbert and used with permission

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