For most of us, simply grabbing a quick snap or our plane at the gate, or perhaps the wing through the window by our seat is enough to satisfy out thirst for photography. Not for Mike Kelley, though, oh no. He camped out at some of the busiest airports in the world to photograph planes all day long as they took off and landed. These shots were then composited to create some of the most amazing commercial airline images you’ve ever seen. With the camera locked off on a tripod, shooting images for hours at a time, each composite shows the passage of time compressed into an instant. It’s an incredibly ambitious project and we wanted to know more. So, DIYP got in touch with Mike to get some insight into this work.
Some of you may have seen Mike’s photo above from 2014. It showed an 8 hour span of planes taking off from LAX in a single frame. Little did he know at the time he posted it to Reddit just how viral it would become. DIYP spoke with Mike about that image and how the project has evolved since then.
So that brings us to the original image from LAX, conceived in 2014. I’ve always been fascinated by aviation and one day while out at LAX plane spotting, decided that I wanted to try capturing multiple takeoffs and putting them together into a single image to show their flight paths and the sheer volume of traffic departing LAX. To do this, I used some of the same techniques that I use to photograph architecture, mostly simple pen-tooling and layer masking. The crazy thing is that the first image was originally supposed to just be a proof-of-concept to see if the idea had any legs. I put it on the internet as kind of a “hey, check this little thing out that I did, it’s kind of cool” and it just went crazy viral. Indeed it did. I must’ve seen it shared a dozen times a day on my timeline for a week after it was initially posted. It stills shows up at least a couple of times a month. So how did this single image turn into a series?
Since I’m obsessed with airplanes, travel, and seeing new places, it was also a great excuse to get me out of my comfort zone a little bit. At the time I started the project, I had been photographing architecture for about five years straight and a break was in order, so it was also a nice change of pace!
With the security concerns surrounding airports over the past couple of decades, securing access to some of them must’ve been difficult. Mike told DIYP about some of the challenges he faced, and how he overcame them.
Mike told us a about the equipment he used on the original LAX shot, what he learned, and how his technique has evolved since then.
Using a higher resolution camera and stitching multiple shots together certainly makes sense if you need to print huge sizes. It’s interesting the number of issues that stitching can resolve. Whether printing large, simulating a larger format camera, or overcoming the minimum focal length of your lens to create panoramics, it’s a useful technique.
Stitching isn’t always easy, though, especially when you have this many photos to sift through, shot at different times of the day. Mike went into some depth on his post processing techniques with us.
It’s a fantastic and intriguing set of images. What went into creating them is just as interesting as the images themselves. Here are more of Mike’s images from this series.
Thank you, Mike, for sharing your work, time and insight with us. Hopefully this isn’t the end of this project, and we’ll continue to see it grow around the world. You can find out more about Mike and his work on his website. If you want to hang some of these images on your own walls, you can purchase prints here. To keep up with Mike’s work and adventures, you can follow him on Facebook and Instagram, or reach out to him through Twitter. Images used with permission.
