{"id":10313,"date":"2026-04-19T10:50:55","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T10:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bobgriffithsphoto.uk\/?p=10313"},"modified":"2026-04-19T10:50:56","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T10:50:56","slug":"artist-research-drone-practitioners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bobgriffithsphoto.uk\/?p=10313","title":{"rendered":"Artist Research: Drone Practitioners"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For the last four years I’ve been using drones as part of my photography practice. I’ve been using the DJI Mini series of drones as they are under 249g in weight so don’t need to comply to the more stringent rules for drones above that weight. I’ve shot video and photo on three drones, my first a DJI Mini 2 that I lost in the River Severn, the second a DJI Mini 3 Pro that saw its ending in a tree in the town centre, the most recent is my DJI Mini 4 Pro which I’ve held onto now for a good period of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve used my drones to make short videos and photographs of buildings in my hometown of Shrewsbury as well places of interest. I’ve used it to document changes in the condition of my employers factory roof and even help friends with photos of their topiary garden. I find the aerial perspective a fascinating one, with often seen perspectives being completely thrown out of kilter by a strange view. A good example of this is a photo of a multi-storey car park that millions of people have seen before, when photographed from above shows a confusing vision. The photo below shows the UEA Student Accommodation from above, and what looks unusual from this angle is a collection of pyramid style concrete buildings. It is difficult to put a scale on what we are looking at until we notice the cars that feature in the photo, this puts things into perspective and illustrates everything that we are trying to work out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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UEA Ziggurats , Bob Griffiths 2025 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Other photographers who use drones or aerial photography are interesting to me and they provide some great context and examples of how top down views can be useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jeffrey Millstein<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first I will mention is Jeffrey Millstein who I first noticed at Photo London a few years ago, I bought one of his books, LANY, which features amazing images of places around New York and Los Angeles. The photos are normally made Milstein being above the scene in a helicopter, they are meticulously planned shots. As you can see in the photo below, a photo of Liberty Island with the famous Statue of Liberty looks completey different from this angle. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Statue of Liberty, NY. From the book “LANY” \u00a9 Jeffrey Milstein<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The photo I made from a boat close to the location at the bottom of this Milstein image is far more recognisable and whilst you can recognise the structure from the water, from the air it’s difficult to put a scale to it. I think thats what I like about aerial images, the confusion over working out the subject and scale is a brain exercise to calculate the contents.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Statue Of Liberty, Bob Griffiths 2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The images don’t have to be completely top down, some amount of angle gives a picture the perspective that helps the viewer make sense of the vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Century and Harbor Freeway Interchange, LA. From the book “LANY” \u00a9 Jeffrey Milstein<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This image in particular must have inspired a recent photo of mine of Spaghetti Junction, on the M6 near Birmingham. The scale of the roads looks unreal in Milstein’s image and the cars could be a small blob of paint on a painting giving the same effect, only when you get closer or zoom in you can see exactly what they are. The shadows of the flyover support pillars cut across the lower road tracks and the multiple layers give the image a good sense of depth. Below you can see my drone photograph of the M6 Junction 6, which is inspired by similar photos. The main difference being my unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has an upper altitude limit of 120m (400 feet) and Milstein’s helicopter is bound to be above this so would be able to include far more scope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In my image, above, you can see field of view is narrower and the time of day is very different. My photo is taken during blue hour as dusk was falling, the lights have come on and the vehicles lights are all on too. My image as a result of the differing conditions and the lesser spec camera on the drone is not as detailed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Milstein normally shoots from helicopters using Fujifilm GFX cameras as well as Phase One XF cameras, which are all high resolution medium format. The GFX100 II has a resolution of 102 Megapixel which is huge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The photo below shows some shipping terminals in LA and the collections of containers in the right half of the photo are stacked and spread across the rows and columns, which gives me some nostalgia for the old copyright protection methods on early home computer games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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APM Terminals, Terminal Island LA. From the book “LANY” \u00a9 Jeffrey Milstein<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The picture below is a recreation of the game protection for Jet Set Willy, in which the game would prompt for a row and column then expect you to type in the colour sequence that existed in the location. (It was before scanning and copying were available for colour images)<\/p>\n\n\n

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Internet Archaeology Journal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Milstein’s image shows a ship at the dock underneath the blue arms of the huge container cranes but it is not obvious what it is that we are looking at. Milstein specialises in these top down images that I have seen printed in huge format and some on light boxes. They looked fantastic. I would recommend the book LANY too, it’s a great coffee table book that contains photos that remind me of Where’s Wally (Waldo in the US) pictures and I’m tempted to look throughout the photo for interesting individual details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

George Steinmetz<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Another photographer that makes aerial photographs is Steinmetz, who used to fly motorised paragliders but more recently uses professional drones. He states that he is excited about the new possibilities that the use of drones has opened up. He uses Google Earth to scout locations before visiting and now he uses drones he no longer needs to have a take off and emergency landing position for the paraglider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Moviegoers enjoying Saturday Night Fever at Bryant Park, George Steinmetz.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As you can see in this photo above, it is comparable to Milstein’s works with the straight down view onto the scene but he uses a lower angle with a good perspective going out into the distance which often provides more context to the shot. The below photo is more of a top down view and looks like a game played on the Commodore Amiga called Skidmarks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Go Karts around Coney Island Raceway, George Steinmetz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The next photo shows 432 Park Avenue, NYC being constructed above Central Park which can be seen with the surrounding city and the Hudson river in the background separating Manhattan from New Jersey. The angle of this shot provides the context to remove the mystery of what it is we are looking at, this gives us clear understanding that these are huge tower buildings in the city. For me I love these images and I do recreate them with some scenes that I come across in the UK. In my opinion though I prefer the shots that leave a mystery to what the contents are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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432 Park Avenue and Central Park, George Steinmetz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Nowhere near the same size or scale but my photo of Shrewsbury Market Hall Clock shows how I use my drone capture som eof the same type of angles. Steinmetz uses more professional equipment though, when he was in the paraglider and helicopters he shot with Canon 5D III and the 5DS R and the drones he has used in the past include DJI Inspire 2 and DJI Mavic 2 Pro<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Shrewsbury Market Hall Clock, Bob Griffiths, 2022<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Yann Arthus-Bertrand<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Another photographer who is well known for his aerial photography and his ook Earth From Above, Arthus-Bertrand has also moved from solely flying in helicopters to the more useful drone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Marrakesh Carpet, Morocco, Yann Arthus-Bertrand<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Whilst his photos have a more artlike feel to them compared to Steinmetz, they both play with the same tools to make the image confusing to the human eye. This photo of some carpets in Marrakesh could be a patchwork carpet on the floor of a room until you notice the small figure in white clothing making their way across the scene. It shows us that there is a huge open space and for some reason all of these carpets are spread far and wide, with for the purpose of sales or manufacture. It could almost be a flasely coloured aerial shot of fenced off fields in the UK countryside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hi sbook Earth From Above is famous for some of its images of natural sights, such as deltas of some of the earth’s largest rivers. The images appear to be from a different world, a remote distant planet where a methane sea is filled from a great waterway. This image below is a shot from Iceland and it was likely captured in a DJI Inspire 2 which has a 20.8 megapixel sensor and has been known to change the camera to a Zenmuse device which has a 25 megapixel sensor. The shot of Iceland below could be mistaken for the stratified layers in a piece of rock under a macro lens or even a painterly abstract piece of art. It’s beautiful in that you are requiring answers by not completely understanding the scale immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pjorsa River Detail, Iceland. Yann Arthus-Bertrand<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The last picture I’ll discuss here from his website is of a Tunisian Olive Grove and does not look like anything real that we might see on the planet. It could be mistaken for a terrain map or a close up of a printed circuit board with the copper having been etched off messily. It shows what I think makes aerial photos tempting and often impossible to walk past without a glance. The Pattern drags you in, its unmistakable that this is a subject pretending to be something else. The shapes, irregularity and the underlying order breeds more questions. If we know it is a real photograph of somewhere on Earth then we start to dig deeper and think more about what it could possibly represent. It could almost be a hidden picture within the picture, something akin to the magic eye pictures from back in the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Newly Planted Olive Groves: Zaghouan, Tunisia. Yann Arthus-Bertrand.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If anything though, I think it’s just the mystery and the ability to drill further into an image and keep seeing layers of reality peel away like a visual onion with the outer layer being total mystery, the next being a realisation that this is real, the next layer where we learn it’s an aerial photo, and then through the lower layers to it’s a big bit of land, its a farm , those are hills and the contour lines are irrigation, boundaries, netting, to those individual blobs are trees, to oh my god there’s a person there, how small are they? Like peeling away the layers of a real onion I do find these sort of images eyewatering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reflection<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

These are not the only photographers I have researched when it comes to Drone\/Aerial photography and I haven’t stuck to the same pattern of top down huge patterns as they mostly do, possibly due to the limitations of my consumer level drone and the lack of ability to fly it to a height where these types of images become possible. My use of the drones for photography is similar to the photo below, again from Arthus-Bertrand. Where he has lifted the camera up to a more horizontal angle and captured the photos of the building and the life that appears there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sao Paolo, Yann Arthus-Bertrand<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My photos of Shirehall using the drone have captured a few of this angle and some closer, some further away from the surface. I have also contemplated taking it to Trellick Tower in London to capture a similar image to this as my on-ground photography of the tower is good for a wide angle but it begs a closer version to explore the different lives that people lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am unable to justify spending much money on a professional drone at the moment and will make do with my DJI Mini 4 Pro which although it has a 48 megapixel camera, the sensor is small and the stability of the whole platform is a little sketchy in gusty conditions. My drone will be accompanying me on the summer trip to the US where we will be driving from San Francisco on the West Coast to New York City on the Eastern seaboard. Hopefully, I’ll be able to use it to capture some inspirational images and report back on this blog how we got on. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the last four years I’ve been using drones as part of my photography practice.…<\/p>\n

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