A Different Perspective

November 3, 2020 11:43 AM

What things look like from above... can be utterly revealing, or rather abstract instead: the 2020 Aerial Photography Awards.
posted by Stoneshop (19 comments total)

Holy smokes!!!
posted by CarrotAdventure at 12:18 PM on November 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

I really love the Abstract Greece by Sebastien Nagy, seems a very humanist photographer, likes the same forms I do. Thanks for posting Stoneshop
posted by unearthed at 1:10 PM on November 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

oh my goodness, I'm glued to the screen! this is so engrossing. thanks for posting!!
posted by ipsative at 1:27 PM on November 3, 2020

I really love the Abstract Greece

That was the first picture in the newspaper article that led me to the actual awards site, and my initial impression was that someone had recreated an Escher drawing in some high-end rendering software.

Stunning.
posted by Stoneshop at 1:38 PM on November 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

How do you decide which side is up? I think a few of them are upside down.
posted by Rich Smorgasbord at 1:44 PM on November 3, 2020

The back of your head is up. Try laying your monitor on the ground and looking down at it.
posted by agentofselection at 2:07 PM on November 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

There's a picture of Ivry-Sur-Seine in Nagy's Instagram. It's a great picture but it's also ... a real, whacko brutalist architecture thing.
posted by chavenet at 3:31 PM on November 3, 2020

Daily Overview is one of my favorite Twitter accounts. They have a website with an archive of great aerial photos.

https://www.over-view.com/
posted by straight at 3:55 PM on November 3, 2020

It was strange that there were terraced fields in "nature," but it was otherwise very beautiful!
posted by explosion at 4:11 PM on November 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

Brad Walls' photography looks like it's upside-down to me, but then he's Australian.
posted by hippybear at 6:50 PM on November 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

This first photo from Sebastien Muller looks more like a Lawren Harris painting than a photo to me. It's gorgeous.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:14 PM on November 3, 2020

That tubular apartment building caught my eye and lead me to an article about the the Ponte apartments in Johannesburg. Fascinating video at the bottom of the article, highly recommend. They started as a posh address when built but transitioned into decay during the transition to democracy in the 90's, having 3 stories of garbage in the center. After some cleanup, an apocalyptic setting that is now considered to be a cool, yet still shabby, place to live, your friends may get jealous. Currently having boarding house rules, if you get to know security well after living there for a time they the charge to bring guests in may be ignored.
posted by waving at 5:27 AM on November 4, 2020

Johan Vandenhecke's winning photo of the Tatacoa desert in the Fine Art category is just absolutely stunning. It's looks like it came straight out of a fractal landscape generator and a raytracer. But with some clusters of trees dotted around because it's actually real.
posted by automatronic at 5:40 AM on November 4, 2020

wonderful wonderful wonderful. thank you for posting.
posted by BekahVee at 6:10 AM on November 4, 2020

Oh, lovely! (I really only clicked because my fingers keep autopiloting to news/election sites and I needed a distraction, but this is great.) That flamingo perspective was nice -- it very consciously puts you in mind of how a bird sees the world. Conversely, it's a little funny how mundane the real estate section is. These are lovely shots, but I've seen so many glitzy ads like this that they really lose some awe. (At least a couple of the finalists seem to be explicitly part of a marketing campaign!)

There's something surprisingly mundane about the lockdown photos, too. So many of those gorgeous, lovingly-composed pics in the man-made category already look ghostly. The pictures can't live up to the weirdness of living it.
posted by grandiloquiet at 7:26 AM on November 4, 2020

These are so wonderful!
posted by obfuscation at 8:05 AM on November 4, 2020

Spanish Rainbow is the city building simulation game I want to play.

Will someone please build a Civ City game that looks like this and then take my money? And hire Brett Devereaux to consult?
posted by Jawn at 5:58 PM on November 4, 2020

Jawn: have you seen Townscaper? Sounds like it's right up your, er, alley?
posted by Acey at 10:31 AM on November 5, 2020

Nice. You definitely get a different perspective on things seeing them from...a different perspective. I like this a lot
posted by BenHiltop at 2:56 AM on November 10, 2020