How much of the Earth’s beauty – natural and human-created – do we miss every day, because it’s only visible from above? Photographer duo (and brothers) JP and Mike Andrews reveal some of the incredible sights and patterns that become apparent when viewed from the sky, calling their work “abstract aerial art.” Using a pair of drones called the DJI Phantom 4 Pro and DJI Mavic 2 Pro, the brothers find scenes that almost seem too perfect to be real.

It all began in 2016 when the UK-based photographers visited Australia and wondered how much more they could see of remote locations from overhead. They bought their first drone and headed to the outback, amazed by what they found.

“From the perspective of our drone, we saw the textures of the earth for the first time. The swirl of patterns, symmetry and colours. Instantly, we were drawn to the unusual sights we were witnessing from above. Each changing landscape exposed the truly weird and wonderful world we live in. The more we photographed them, the more we couldn’t believe what we were seeing!”

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A post shared by Abstract Aerial Art (@abstractaerialart)

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A post shared by Abstract Aerial Art (@abstractaerialart)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Abstract Aerial Art (@abstractaerialart)

“Pointing the camera on the drone directly downwards towards the earth, was the perspective that intrigued us the most. We referred to it between ourselves as the ‘topdown‘ perspective. It was a view that we had very rarely seen before and it really suited the types of images we were taking. We focused on shooting each landscape we discovered this way. Seeing the world from this angle, led us to compose our shots as if they were artworks rather than traditional photographs.”

Before long, they developed an eye for spotting locations that would reveal the most dazzling effects from that top-down perspective – roads overtaken by wind-blown sand, rainbow striped tulip fields, stacks of crates on barges that create cityscape shadows on the water, orderly parking lots and perfectly spaced beach umbrellas.

You can see more of their work on Instagram @abstractaerialart, and purchase prints on their website.

Beams of light dance, jump, squiggle, scatter and interact with each other as if they’ve taken on a life of their own in a series of animated light art gifs by New York City-based photographer Lucea Spinelli. Abandoned school buses, public park benches, playgrounds, glass jars and human bodies become the settings for surreal, almost ghostly scenes calling to mind the common superstition of supernatural beings affecting electricity.

In fact, all that seems to be missing from some of these animations is a proton pack from Ghostbusters, as the clusters of light created by Spinelli take on the movements of autonomous beings. Spinelli takes still shots of moving light using long exposure methods and then strings them together to create these animated sequences.

“In her project phötosgraphé, Lucea Spinelli creates long exposure photographs that afford us a view into the unknown,” reads the statement on the artist’s website. “For the duration of the open shutter the lens becomes a canvas upon which Lucea paints with light. The illuminated forms she creates interact with spaces and objects in a wa that evoke the unseen – such as spirit, dreams and metaphor – within the everyday.”

“Often staying in the dark for long hours and relying on muscle memory alone, the process reflects ritual as a necessary part of interacting and evoking the unseen aspects of our reality. Thus by using a medium is commonly used to mimic reality, to suspend it, Lucea invites us to push beyond the bounds of visual perception to explore other ways of knowing. Finally, by stringing sequences of these long exposure photographs together into an animated gif, the light forms are literally brought to life as they dance across the forever looping frame.”

A floor is a ceiling, a lake is made of shattered glass, carpets of grass cascade over the edge of the world and buildings sprout wheels and wander away in the fantastically surreal world of Erik Johansson. The photographer has spent much of the last decade refining his reality-bending image manipulation techniques, combining dozens of real photos to create effects that are often hyperrealistic yet physically impossible. As unlikely as it may seem, Johansson uses no CGI, stock photos or digital illustrations in his work – each image is a complex collage of his own photographs, captured on his Hasselblad HD5-40 camera.

On his YouTube channel, the artist offers behind-the-scenes videos for many of his works so we can see just how each one is assembled. For his newest piece, ‘Impact,’ Johansson carefully cut four massive mirrors into fragments, arranged them in a field and photographed his model standing among them in a kayak. Photos from this shoot are ultimately blended with images of a lake and additional studio photos of cracked mirror shards.

Depicting just about every step the artist takes during the process, the videos are just as impressive as the final images and make it clear that the arduous process requires many hours of retouching. Johansson even leaves in the parts where he experiments with various effects and ideas that don’t make it to the final version.

As he explains on his website, Johansson is interested in capturing ideas rather than moments, but with the goal of making each one look as realistic as possible, saying “The only thing that limits us is our imagination.”

Creative urban photographers have a way of representing cities in new and different lights. Unusual urban photographs can cause one to rethink familiar perspectives and can open a city up to new interpretations. The above urban typography close-ups cleverly play on both the two-dimensionality of text (and photography) and the vertical three-dimensionality of the urban environment.

Sam Javanrouh has taken advantage of mid-range photography and digital media to create the above image. On his website you can even actively shift the entire photograph from day to night. All in all, this is one very creative way to blend the powerful potential of internet tools and the classic medium of photography.

Finally, space exploration has introduced a radically different perspective on the world and its urban populations – from far above the Earth’s surface. The above image shows quite directly the distribution of cities on the planet, more simply and profoundly than a graph or chart could. You can also see a compelling full-sized version of this image or see more Earth-from-space images from NASA.