Africa, slowly, from the sky

The April 19 issue of the New Yorker had an interesting article by Lauren Collins on the American photographer George Steinmetz. His speciality is taking pictures from a motorised paraglider which  he flies low and slow (27 mph is the one speed it has). With it he can get the angles which he wants, whereas "trying to get a pilot to put a plane exactly where you want it is like trying to get someone else to scratch an itch".

The picture above is of a salt-making site at the village of Teguidda-n-Tessoumt in northern Niger.

My favourite photograph in the article was one of Beni Isguen, one of the five walled villages in the M'zab region of Algeria, which seen from above looked like the inside of a multi-coloured electronic device. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find it on the Internet. However, you can see a number of  other wonderful photographs which he has taken of Africa in this video. 

George Steinmetz - African Air from George Steinmetz on Vimeo.

There is another video about the Arabian desert here

And you can find more photographs at http://www.georgesteinmetz.com/. It took me a while to find out how to see all the photographs so here's what you need to do: under Images, you will find a drop-down menu of projects. If you select one of them a photo will appear, but each project has a dozen or so others which can be seen if you click on "View Story" at the bottom right of the screen.