Hit the jump for some amazing overhead pictures by Jason Hawkes, a UK aerial photographer.
Hawkes has published 25 books of aerial photography, and is always in demand for clients like big advertising agencies and Wired UK.
Hawkes (left, with one his regular pilots) works all over the world — a recent shoot was over Las Vegas — but most of his work in in the U.K, especially London.
He shoots leaning out of the door of a twin squirrel helicopter, with a tether, of course. He uses stabilizers and often shoots with a Nikon D3 tethered to a Mac.
Digital makes aerial photography much easier. He uses GPS to automatically tag the shots (he used to take handwritten notes) and he can shoot thousands of images every time he goes up. He needs to: helicopter rental is very expensive, and he often needs to clear flights when shooting low over London.
He’s got also got great business sense. He shoots a lot of stock images when flying for a client or for a new book. The book publisher pays for the images but he’s free to resell them afterwards to stock agencies like Getty or through his own site, JasonHawkes.com.
Powered by Adobe Lightroom, the site is a sophisticated ecommerce system with more than 45,000 images, organized by search terms and broad categories like “Patterns,” “Night” or “London.”
Above: A highly retouched night shot of London for the cover of the first issue of Wired UK.
Below: Various shots of London, the Las Vegas strip, the U.K. countryside, Spanish beaches, and Hong Kong.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
