Chris Dahl-Bredine isn’t your average aerial photographer — if there even is such a thing. Driven by a desire to connect with the world around him with as few barriers as possible, Chris straps himself into an ultralight aircraft and takes to the skies. Steering with one hand and shooting with the other, he captures stunning images of the American Southwest from above.
In our latest One Day, One Artist film, we accompany Chris into the high desert and mountains of New Mexico to see things from a bird’s-eye view. Watch the film below, and read on for a few of his tips about flight, photography, and elevating your perspective.
One of the biggest hurdles I ran into when I started flying was people thinking, “You’re nuts! You’re going to kill yourself!” They basically tried to scare me out of it. But anything is possible if you really put your mind to it and do it safely. Aerial photography is something you want to take step by step and really build your skills — piloting, learning the weather, knowing your camera, knowing your aircraft — so when you get up in the sky, you feel comfortable and can relax.
If you’re up there and you’re terrified, then you did something out of order. The most important thing is you feel safe up there before you even worry about photography. From there, that’s where magic happens.
I was always interested in photography, but I would only dabble in it. I never got that into it until I started flying. That’s when I realized what I was seeing was special and something not many people get to see. This was long before drones existed — almost 20 years ago — so especially then, not many people saw what I saw. Once I started flying, it was a natural progression to want to share what I was seeing through photography.
The main thing is capturing an image when you’re inspired by something — something that moves you when you see it. If it means something to you, it’s probably going to mean something to someone else as well.
When I first started photographing, I had a tiny, 35mm point-and-shoot Olympus camera. Then I met a guy where I live in Taos who was a printer and a photographer, and I wanted to print my images bigger. When you print them big, they just come to life; they’re more dramatic. But I realized I was limited by my little camera. So I tried digital for a little while, which was even worse at the time — at least what I could afford. Then I went to medium-format film, and that started getting me the quality and resolution I wanted for big prints. You could stand in front of a big print and feel like you’re looking out a window and actually seeing the scene in front of you. It just comes to life.
Shooting medium format while flying was challenging, but it also made me want to make each shot count, so it was good training for me. And when I could afford a really nice digital camera and shoot a thousand frames in one flight, that changed things.
Photographically, I try to be flexible and open to learning new things. It’s easy to get into one way of doing things and stay in that rut of process. I try to keep an open mind when I’m up there with the camera because I know there’s a lot I don’t know. There’s always a new way to see things and a new way to capture things. Everyone can find their own way that’s going to be different from someone else. The story is an important part of the photo, too, so I think finding and taking photos that have a story is a good thing to have in mind when you shoot.
In general, I make sure my camera gear is charged, I have plenty of room on my memory cards, and I have an extra battery. Then there’s the gear I wear: electric socks, electric gloves, long underwear, down pants, a down jacket, and a down suit over all that. It’s mostly having all the right layers so you can stay up there a while. If you forget one thing — say, your neck gaiter that keeps your face warm — then you have to land early because it’s so cold. Any bit of gear that fails or that you forget can basically end the flight earlier than you want to.
For my lens I usually use something pretty flexible, like a 24–70mm or 27–105mm, but I’ll sometimes change lenses. It’s totally possible to change lenses up there, but you have to be pretty cautious and aware of what you’re doing. I’ve seen a $2,500 lens fall out of a trike. A friend of mine didn’t get it on the camera right and we never found it. That was a big loss, but the biggest danger of shooting while flying is if anything falls and goes into the propeller…then you’re looking at more problems than your gear.
I really love flying when there are clouds. There are so many variations of what could happen when there’s clouds in the sky, it changes everything. I wait for weather events that could have spectacular clouds: a particular kind of lighting, really clear air after rain or snow, new snow on the mountains or on the deserts — that gets me up early, too.
I’m always drawn toward the light whenever I’m up there. When you follow your gut feeling, you can find something even greater than you imagined below the clouds. Once I saw golden shafts of light coming through a hole in the clouds up in the mountains. It was all grey and drab down below, so I made my way toward this light. After probably 30 minutes, I finally got up to the hole and popped through. On the other side was the most beautiful, golden cloudscape. Trees and peaks were poking up out of the clouds, everything was glittering and wet, the golden light was shining down on everything below me as I went above the clouds. It was such an exhilarating moment.
The best advice I have come across is to follow your truest passion — whatever moves you to a place of feeling alive, happy, and grateful. Seeing the world with wonder and gratitude keeps you open to other people and experiences, which is so important.
Much of photography can be a self-centered, “look at the shot I got” kind of thing. Which is fine — there’s nothing wrong with that — but how can we make photography a contribution to the whole that makes us better as a culture and as a world? I hope to inspire people to see the wonder of this world that we live in and be moved to a place of “I want to take care of this” or “how can I make the world better for future generations?” instead of “how can I go get this shot and call it mine?”
Building connections between people and the natural world — promoting a cleaner, better, more sustainable future — is an important thing people often overlook. If you can find some way to make connections with the natural world and with other people through your photography, I think that’s really what’s needed these days.
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