There are various strategies photographers use to properly illuminate landscape at night, but a neat one that has emerged in recent times is the use of drones equipped with powerful lights. Patryk Sadowski is one photographer who has been doing gorgeous work in this niche.
Four years ago, Swiss freeskier and filmmaker Nicolas Vuignier had the idea of lighting a night skier using a drone. After a great deal of planning and work, this 4-minute short film titled "Heatseeker" is what resulted. It features beautiful footage of a skier hurtling down the mountainside at night under the glow of a drone-mounted flare.
Here's a new short film by NYC visual storyteller Tim Sessler. Titled "The Place Where," the "visual poem" was shot at an old cement mine and features nighttime scenes illuminated by a 1600W LED drone light.
Photographer Reuben Wu recently traveled to Pastoruri, one of the few glaciers left in tropical South America, and photographed it with lighting from an LED drone.
Photographer Reuben Wu is a pioneer of using LEDs mounted to drones to light landscapes at night, and his project Lux Noctis is filled with gorgeous and unusual photos created using this technique. More recently, Wu has added yet another creative touch: he adds halos above the rock pinnacles on dramatic landscapes by flying the drones in circles during long-exposure photos.
Using drones to illuminate scenes and subjects using flashes and powerful LED lights is a new trend made possible by the emergence of affordable and intelligent consumer drones. If you'd like to see what the latest experimentation is producing, check out the 2.5-minute short film above, titled "mémoires". It was lit entirely with drone lights.
Photographing movement and action has been a passion of mine since I first picked up a camera in 2003 and although my techniques and craft have changed my subject matter has held true to capturing the fleeting moment throughout the years.
Reuben Wu's science fiction-inspired, drone-lit landscape photos have exploded since we shared them last week, and now Reuben is showing off exactly how these eerie images were shot in a behind the scenes video.
For his new project Lux Noctis, photographer Reuben Wu lit and photographed landscapes at night by mounting powerful LED lights to GPS-enabled drones.