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Earth from Above
For two years, and before today’s laws banned or limited the use of drones, I travelled the world with a quad-copter in my backpack. From the Taj Mahal to the Kremlin, I photographed many of the world’s most famous landmarks — from angles that we’ve never seen before, and that today, would be totally illegal.Between the introduction of drone technology, and today’s laws limiting or banning their use, there was a glorious period of about 18 months where it was possible to fly these things almost anywhere in the world and people were still excited to see them. One of the surprising things about drone photography is that when I am flying it I can’t actually see what the camera is seeing. People find that weird, but I quite like the suspense of not knowing what I have until I get the camera in hand. Already the window is now pretty well closed for drone photography at many of these sites. The following images are the results of two years travel with a quad-copter in my backpack.Above on the left you see the Taj Mahal, with the Yamuna river snaking away towards its source in the Himalayas. On the right, you see the day’s first tourists begin to trickle through the gates. It was amazing to be seeing an angle that had almost certainly never before been seen — not in all the centuries that this thing has stood there. All other images shared in this story were legal when I took them. The exception was the Taj Mahal, which even very early after the technology’s inception had rules in place. I had come so far to take the shot that I persisted in sneaking into a hidden take-off point, but the police were extremely diligent and professional. Probably the best security I’ve seen anywhere in the world. I got a warning, then tried to sneak in again the next day. After I had taken these images, I had to leave Agra very quickly. Above you see two wrestlers, close to the grounds of the Taj Mahal, practising the ancient Indian sport of kushti in a pit that they had hacked into the ground just two hours before.n the left, you see the beautiful Lotus Temple, dotted with pigeons at sunrise. Designed by an Iranian exile, this building serves as the centre of the Bahai’i faith in Delhi. And on the right, the emperor Humayun’s tomb, as commissioned by his widow.
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