A higher love

For award-winning photographer Kacper Kowalski, it’s important to actually be up in the clouds himself. He reveals more about his unusual techniques to Amy Davies

- Amy Davies

In an age where aerial photography has become more accessible than ever thanks to the commercialisation of drones, there are some who still prefer to put in the hard work of being up in the sky themselves.

For someone like Kacper Kowalski it’s about so much more than the final image, and, as such, there is a real need to shoot his images directly from above, rather than safely on terra firma. It’s an approach that seems to work – in the 25 years he’s been doing this, he’s won countless awards, been exhibited numerous times and is putting together a book charting all of his success.

He’s fresh from taking home top prize in the Professional Landscape Photography category at the prestigious Sony World Photography Awards, where the project shown here on these pages – Event Horizon – clearly impressed the judges.

Hooked

I too was struck by the unusual nature of these images. Working on a weekly photography magazine, it’s easy to become tired of the usual landscapes – as stunning as they generally are – but these, shot from an aerial perspective and in monochrome, are striking in a completely different way, and for all the right reasons. Upon discovery that they were shot in person from above, I was even more hooked and keen to find out more. Happily, Kacper was only too forthcoming with some answers.