A short set of slightly abstract images taken from a flight over the Grand Canyon.

The aim was to produce images similar to the reliefs seen in an old geography text book.

Photographing through a moving airplane window was quite challenging. With a rather tight travel schedule, we chose a late-afternoon flight to try to get some shadow and contrast in the photographs, shooting with a fast shutter speed to compensate for the rather bumpy flight and using careful post processing in Lightroom to handle the atmospheric haze.

Framing was challenging, to avoid the wheel and wings of the aircraft and it was difficult to avoid reflections through the window glass (cupping a hand around the lens works surprisingly well).

For folk back home, there are also a collection of less abstract snaps from both ground and air in the gallery after the break:

It is worth adding that the flight was definitely worth taking – operated by the excellent Scenic Airlines, using a Twin Otter aircraft that was modified with larger windows. And it was also the first time I have seen check-in desks with scales embedded in the floor to measure the weight of the passengers!