All About Perspective: A Milky Way 'Flightlapse' from a Pilot's POV

The first time I landed in a foreign country at night was when I went to Costa Rica in 2009. I remember being wide awake for the last hour of the flight and looking out the window at the yellow spider webs of city lights as I descended over Central America. Seeing populated places from above at night was new to me; the patterns of the streets, the sprawl of the towns, the promise of life popping up at random amidst the calm of the surrounding darkness all made it one of the most exciting flights I'd ever taken. And that's not even mentioning the stars overhead.

This video, a time-lapse of the Milky Way from the point of view of an airline pilot, hit my nostalgia buttons pretty hard. Sales Wick, a 30-year-old Swiss airline pilot who also happens to be a photographer and film producer, captured these scenes with a Sony a7S and 35mm f/1.4 lens during a flight from Zurich to São Paulo. Even though the quality and stability of the video might not be top-notch, it's the first one I've ever seen taken from a commercial airliner cockpit, so the POV factor alone made it worth watching. It combines a lot of dreams — dreams of flying, being a pilot traveling around the world, seeing the stars from above the clouds, maybe even space travel — into one neat little package. Perspective is one of the most important aspects of photography, and this video offers one that's different than most of us will ever get to experience. Thanks, Wick.

[via PetaPixel]

Stephen Ironside's picture

Stephen Ironside is a commercial photographer with an outdoor twist based in Fayetteville, Arkansas. While attempting to specialize in adventure and travel photography, you can usually find him in the woods, in another country, or oftentimes stuffing his face at an Indian buffet.

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1 Comment

beautiful!!!