Teepee from Above
“A good photograph is knowing where to stand.”
In this quotation, Ansel Adams is talking about perspective. Positioning the camera differently impacts the viewer differently.
I’ve been known to lay face down in the mud, stand on my tippy toes on a boulder, or position my camera inches above the water to gain perspective. Until the advent of drones, obtaining an aerial perspective was financially out of my reach.
In 1858, Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, better known as Nadar, took the first aerial photograph. He worked from a tethered balloon over the French village of Petit-Becetre. These initial photographs haven’t survived. But his pioneering spirit laid the groundwork for today’s aerial and drone photography.
By Honoré Daumier / Adam Cuerden
The oldest surviving aerial photograph was taken by James Black and Samuel King on October 13, 1860. It depicts Boston from a height of 2,000 feet.
www.Alamay.com
Other platforms followed balloons. Kites were first used for aerial photography in 1882. Then in 1909, an airplane was used to film a short movie over Rome. The use of aerial photography aboard planes rapidly matured during World War I.
There were other attempts to make aerial photography more affordable and accessible.
www.amusingplanet.com
In the early 1900s, German apothecary Julius Neubronner was using carrier pigeons to deliver medications from his pharmacy to a nearby sanatorium. He had the brilliant idea of creating a tiny camera to strap to the breast of his pigeons. With a bit of tinkering, he built a 75-gram miniature camera (the legal load limit for pigeons) capable of taking 30 exposures. His images were so impressive he was granted a patent.
In 2013, SZ DJI Technology Co., Ltd., better known as simply DJI, introduced its first entry level consumer drone. Now, nearly everyone can take to the skies with a camera. And 90% of those cameras are DJI drones.
The Shot
In 2023, my friend and fellow photographer Jon Christofersen and I headed for the Utah Badlands for a week of drone photography. Arriving a day early, we had a chance to return to an area of eroded sandstone mounds near Page, Arizona informally called the Teepees. We were there in 2008 on one of our first landscape trips.
The Teepees
From my 2008 trip to the Teepees
This time, I took to the air with my drone looking for a different perspective. I was aimed straight down at the Teepee mounds scouting for a pleasing shape painted with the light of the setting sun.
After a few attempts, I thought that this image would cause the viewer to pause and wonder just what the heck they were looking at.
Thanks for looking,
Chuck Derus