Look Up, Look Way Up – Aerial Photographer Louis Helbig

Look up, look way up – Aerial Photographer Louis Helbig

Some photographers wish they could shoot from a higher vantage point. Aerial photographer Louis Helbig does. 1000 feet higher – from the cockpit of his airplane.

To some operating the controls of a camera and composing an image could be challenging enough. Not for Louis, we chat about how he manages to juggle the photography side and the flying side of his work.

Photography was not Louis’ first calling. He was a competitive athlete and his education would have meant a promising career in foreign service with the government and we discuss what led to his decision to change course and become a fine art photographer.

Louis is passionate about his work and he is equally passionate about using his work as a starting point for an open dialogue.

UPDATE!

In November 2015, Louis Helbig’s book Beautiful Destruction was published by Rocky Mountain Books.

The Alberta oil/tar sands are a place of superlatives, of awesome beauty and equally awesome destruction. They are a kaleidoscope of contrasts, colours and patterns keeping time with the seemingly unstoppable movement of machinery, smoke and effluent set in an immense boreal landscape with its own immutable patterns, cadence and cycles.

Beautiful Destruction is a large-format, high-quality photography book that uses over 100 stunning, full-colour aerial photographs to transcend the polarities that dominate public discourse of the largest industrial project in North America: the Alberta oil/tar sands.

With short essays by renowned personalities Bill McKibben, Charles Wilkinson, Duff Connacher, Elizabeth May, Eric Reguly, Ezra Levant, Jennifer Grant, Rick George, Gil McGowan, Allan Adam, Megan Leslie and Francis Scarpaleggia from both sides of the oil/tar sands debate discussing the artistic, industrial and environmental perceptions of northern Alberta”s petroleum-based mega-project, Beautiful Destruction is one of the most ambitious, provocative and unique photography projects to be published in years.