Aerial Photography How To

Richard Cooke is a British action photographer who has been making amazing images of everything from fighter jets to Arctic warfare for the past 40 years. In the video below, you’ll see some incredible shots he captured on film in 1977 of the Red Arrows—an acrobatic team of flyers within Britain’s Royal Air force.

If you’ve ever wondered why a group of tigers is called an “ambush,” the video below pretty much explains the nomenclature. The clip was captured by China Central Television (CCTV) while shooting aerial footage of captive Siberian tigers in the snow, when all of a sudden one of the massive beasts leapt up and yanked their drone out of the sky.

Over the past few years drones have rapidly evolved from high-tech novelties with limited appeal, to serious tools for photographers looking for a means of capturing high-quality aerial scenes that were previously only possible when shooting from an airplane. If you need any evidence, you need look no further than the stunning images below.

We’ve seen some impressive aerial photography through the years, but the recent work by the Russian group AirPano is right up there with the best. The 12-person, not-for-profit team consists of nine photographers and three tech specialists who use planes, helicopters and drones to capture these mind-blowing images.

What happens when you mount a full-frame DSLR on a custom-made drone and fly it over a picturesque valley in the Polish countryside? Photographer Miron Bogacki built a heavy-duty drone to find out, and came up with this beautiful video.

They are the Royal Canadian Air Force Snowbirds aerobatic team, and Lindsay Silverman photographed them at the annual Memorial Day air show held at Jones Beach, New York.

Bill Hatcher was near the park entrance when a wildfire forced the closing of Tioga Pass road into Yosemite National Park last summer. “The fire was threatening to cross the road into Yosemite,” he says, “and helicopters and tankers were being sent out on kind of a bombing run to cut the fire off.”