Airportraits: Airplane Photography Like You’ve Never Seen

Architectural photographer and (self-described) “aviation dork” Mike Kelley has found a new and intriguing way to capture commercial airliners. If you’ve seen one YouTube video of airplanes taking off and landing (yes, that’s a thing… proof here, with over 2 MILLION views), you’ve seen them all. But Los Angeles-based Kelley documents these aircraft in a whole new way. What if you saw a flock of jumbo jets taking off or landing? Amazing sight, right? This talented photographer captures these very scenes in his brilliant series, cleverly titled, Airportraits. Kelley has spent the better part of nearly two years photographing airplanes and airports. After his initial piece, Wake Turbulence, a day’s worth of takeoffs from LAX’s south runways composited into a single image, took off (pun intended) via social media and subsequently named one of the top images of 2014, Kelley mapped out a plan to capture the “inherent beauty in aviation” through similar composite images from airports around the globe. The result is absolutely awesome, from shooting the underbelly of planes from Dockweiler Beach in Los Angeles departing around sunset, to the descent of morning rush arrivals at London’s Heathrow Airport. For fellow aviation dorks in your life (or folks like us who appreciate stellar photography in general), prints available here.

Via mpkelley.com and Instagram

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nA0iy5feQU&w=560&h=315]