From Above: The Story of Aerial Photography

by Gemma Padley, Eamonn McCabe (Photographs)

Since the birth of photography, photographers have been taking images of the earth from the air – with spectacular visual results. Celebrating over 150 years of these incredible images, From Above tells the fascinating story of how these pictures were created and the photographers that have propelled image–taking to bold new heights.

Taking advantage of the amazing sense of perspective that aerial photography offers, this incredible collection of images also offers a unique overview of the events, challenges, and changes of the past 150 years of human history.

"[Anyone who buys From Above ]– will find thumbing through it over and over again irresistible. Because it contains some of the most incredible aerial images in existence, many taken by photography pioneers.
Inside you'll find the first–ever aerial picture of America, taken above Boston in 1860, the first shots by reconnaissance pigeons and startling disaster images, from the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to 9/11 and the tsunami that hit Japan in 2011.
This celebration of 150 years of aerial photography will shock, astound and mesmerise as it takes you on a decade by decade journey using the work of photographers who propelled image–taking to bold new heights." – Mail Online Travel

256 pages, Hardcover

Published October 22, 2019

Reviews

[Eugene Miya · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a better than average coffee table book by artistic types. It's better than average in that it at least has photo mosaics in it, so it rates a B in my book, just barely. The book would have been better with a few stereo-photo pairs like To Fool a Glass Eye: Camouflage Versus Photoreconnaissance in World War II, which while lacking color really teaches how to look at aerial photos. Roy M. Stanley notes that most people don't really understand how the world appears from above. Roy's book sets the stand in his last chapter "Good, Better, Best". Not clear that this book would have been published were the Cold War were still going.

The book could also use a brief bit, even as a coffee table book, photogrammetry. Wikipedia nearly reviewed their entry on that topic just because people never heard of it. The US spends billions on it.
The most serious type of book would be a reference like the Manual of Remote Sensing: Remote Sensing of Human Settlements: 5, but this is not a casual coffee table book.

If a viewer (no reading) insists on such a coffee table book, Harold Wandless (much check spelling) published a book with aerial stereo photographs as part of the Earth Science Curriculum. And if you think you will feel dizzy, you should have a professional show you hot to use the glasses.

[Tutankhamun18 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous! Spanning from 1900 and the dawn of aerial photography from aircrafts, through WW1&2 and photography taken by pilots and pigeons, past the Viet Cong, the assasination of JFK, into environmental destruction and the human presence captured from above and casual drone photography aswell as digitally edited satellite images, this book provides a fascinating overview of aerial photography. All this volume contains is wonderful quality photos and a few short paragraphs explaining what they depict or what the photographers aim was. Great book, so beautiful, so accessible and so interesting.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is another of those big, expensive coffee-table books I get from the library to peruse and appreciate. I paged through this completely but only read bits and pieces. It had a few fascinating and striking aerial photos, but the text was focused on the history of aerial photography and its practitioners rather than any explanation of the curious and odd things in the photographs. I would have preferred the latter.