Let it be known: the future of photography is now, and that future is full of drones. artnet News has noticed an increasing number of drone-based art photography projects popping up in recent months, and the trend isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.

We first fell in love with Rus Turner’s vibrantly colored GoPro drone photos of the English countryside. Published in the Guardian, the drone’s elevated viewpoint and wide lens angle somehow lent an added beauty to the bucolic scenery. On the other end of the spectrum, Tomas van Houtyve captured the ominous, threatening aspect of drone surveillance with chilling black-and-white images of public places across the US that warn for the potential abuse of the technology (see Guardian article and Telegraph slideshow).

In our search for more, we found Andy Snow, who has captured stunning video footage of the Five Rivers Fountain of Lights in Dayton, Ohio, and photographer couple Terry and Belinda Kilby, who recently published Drone Art: Baltimore, a compilation of aerial drone pictures of their native city. And we can’t look away from TravelByDrone, which crowdsources drone videos from around the world to mesmerizing effect, taking Google Street View (perhaps inevitably) to the next level (see Huffington Post report).

Drone photography is also piggybacking onto other trends, with cheeky photographers from Italian art group IOCOSE positioning them in front of mirrors to capture high-tech selfies as part of their ongoing drone-themed series, “In Times of Peace.” As reported by the Creators Project, the photos attempt to answer the question “what would they [drones] do if they were not involved in war scenarios, or used by human beings to deliver parcels, take photos of unreachable areas and so on?” by depicting the machines partaking in boring, everyday activities.

Read the full article here.