Do you love craning your head back, trying to see to the top of beautiful old skyscrapers? The Highrises Project will give you an even better view of these stalwart upthrusts of architecture with drone photography that is able to capture detail work and sculptures not visible dozens of floors below. As reported by MyModernMet, photographer Chris Hytha initially wanted to document historic highrises by shooting them from neighboring rooftops or from a helicopter with a telephoto lens but realized that using drones would create the best images.
Drones only photograph in landscape orientation—but any skyscraper image must of course be vertical to illustrate the building’s upward surge. So Hytha has cobbled together landscape images of each floor at eye level, an interesting solution that also eliminates the diminishing of perspective. Each image represents about 15 landscape shots of the building itself, carefully stitched together.
Hytha’s images capture the last few floors of the skyscrapers before the spire, often with surprising architectural elements that people in the building themselves can’t see. Art Deco waterfalls, tilework, stone guardians, urns, portholes and clocks telling time for birds: all of these have been captured by the drone’s fearless hovering.
Some standouts? Philadelphia’s City Hall, where below the 36-foot tall crowning statue of William Penn there are bronze figures of Native Americans, Europeans and animals such as sheep, a coyote and an eagle with spread wings. Or the Tribune Tower in Oakland, CA, where large neon letters spell out Tribune, and a verdigris-colored triangular tower rises above a black clock. Or the Customs House in Boston, the Wrigley Building in Chicago or the Roosevelt Tower in Seattle...on and on.
To make these images, Hytha had to apply for a drone license and works with the FAA to ensure airspace approval. So where can you see them? Check out Hytha’s Twitter thread in which he shared them. Fun fact to close on: proceeds from selling NFTs of the skyscrapers as spaceships permitted Hytha to create these architectural homages full-time.
