Before he took up photography, Chris Smith was studying marine biology. Though the New Jersey resident never completed his degree, he’s had an abiding interest in science—particularly in physics and the branch of mathematics dealing with the infinitely complex patterns known as fractals—and he’d always hoped he could find a way to merge science and photography. Then came the drone, which afforded him vicarious views of the earth that revealed how very much nature is rooted in mathematics and those fascinating fractals. “You see these patterns popping up everywhere,” he says. “In the ice on a frozen lake, or the drying pattern of crystals on a salt flat.” One of the first photographers to get a drone license from the Federal Aviation Administration, Smith took up drone videography in 2015 and drone photography in 2018, when technological advances finally made it possible to take good, high-resolution drone images. His commercial work is mainly in weddings and real estate, but his passion projects nearly always involve nature and often depict water. “You’re seeing the laws of physics manifested in the landscape, in the way the water flows through the environment,” says Smith, 35. Looking at Smith’s photos is an adventure in altered perspectives, like cracking open a geode and glimpsing the sublime crystalline patterns inside what you thought was an unprepossessing rock. It’s also, of course, a way to fly without leaving the ground.
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CHRIS SMITH’S DRONE PHOTOGRAPHY REVEALS MESMERIZING PATTERNS IN BOTH NATURE AND THE ENGINEERED ENVIRONMENT, DRAMATICALLY ALTERING OUR POINT OF VIEW By Leslie Garisto Pfaff
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