23rd/Jul/2016 •
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Skaters At Night: Taking Drone Art To New Heights

Drones have given us a whole new way of interacting with the world, from military uses to Amazon utilising them for their delivery service. L.A. based artist photographer Jeffrey Moustache has found another innovative use. His illuminating and starkly beautiful series Transient Eclipse shows us exactly why drones should be more incorporated into the world of culture, arts and sports. We sought out Jeffrey to ask him how these shots came about and what was the idea behind them.

How did the idea of drones and skating at night come about?

I am partners in an Aerial videography company (Bigger Better Airlines) and have a background in action sports photography. I grew up skateboarding and photographing skateboarders and noticed a couple years ago, the trend in popularity of drones and people getting the same boring mediocre shot. I have a passion for advanced lighting techniques and have very much pride in lighting my images. It was then back in 2014 that I came up with the concept to mount flashes to drones to be able to have the ability to place a flash in absolutely any location.

Do you think that drones have the ability to enable a whole new field of arts?

Completely. I think I have only unearthed the tip of the iceberg and the possibilities are limitless.

Seeing skaters like this in a environment is quite beautiful, it portrays them in a new light (excuse the pun)

Yes it is definitely something different. I am always trying to push the boundaries of imagery and shape it with my own personal style.

How did you set these photos up in terms of time, aperture, process?

I set these up in a way that I could manage everything without an assistant. I was shooting on a tripod in the evening, typically with my exposures being between 1/8th and 1/2 second long at a very shallow depth of field ( between f 3.5 and f 1.4). I had a remote trigger set up on my camera which I mounted to my drone remote, so I could fly the drone with the flash attached to it, and trigger my camera at the same time.

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