I got access to the top of a eight story structure in Lyons, Illinois last year. I went up to the top of the tower, took some photos and couldn’t get over how much I liked the results. I hadn’t contemplated what a new, higher perspective would do for the images themselves and I couldn’t speak glowingly enough about the photos.  (See example one here, and example two here).

Intent on sussing out even more unusual perspectives to shoot from, I quickly realized that the only way I could go was even further up. So I waited for a day with spectacular clouds, chartered a helicopter from the good people at Rotor Zen and went into the sky to see what new perspectives I could get.

What I failed to anticipate about going up in a helicopter was how different everything was going to look. It was extremely easy for me to spot familiar landmarks, especially the ones that jutted up about the tree line, but they didn’t look anything like they normally looked. It was a fascinatingly new take on familiar sites. This is part one of the photos that I took from that expedition. This is what it looks like above Riverside.