Abstract Aerials

The photographers of Aerial Innovations of Tennessee, Inc., enjoy the opportunity to see the world from a very different perspective—between 500 and 1000 feet above the earth. Owners Wendy Whittemore and Rachel Paul began the company in Tennessee with the help of clients in the construction and real estate industries. Together with their photographers Coral Smith and Will Sullivan they are bringing their creative work to a public stage with a year-long exhibit at Nashville International Airport featuring a broad range of images, including Nashville and Middle Tennessee landscapes, abstract aerials, and construction details of urban development.
Wendy Whittemore, who has been photographing from the sky for the past nine years, states that she is not a pilot, but she enjoys the collaboration with them to achieve her photographic vision. Cruising along just above the earth, everything takes on an interesting dimensional perspective. Creativity has to be captured quickly through the lens, editing on the fly as scenes whiz by. For Wendy this is the very essence of abstract aerials.
- Parking lots are of great interest as you can see patterns form from car marks, paint, light poles and shadows. I couldn’t resist this shot, wondering how those marks were made.
- The Great Smoky Mountains National Park in winter.
- The historical and picturesque South Pittsburg Bridge in Southern Tennessee.
- The top of a skyscraper in downtown Louisville, Kentucky.
- Cooling jets at a paper mill. The extremely hot water is forced through the aeration jets before it is released into the environment.
- The Nashville skyline pops through the early morning clouds.
- I couldn’t resist photographing this formation of three sailboats.
- Like agricultural patterns, when earth is disturbed by man it always has something to offer. This image is of a ditch dug in fresh earth on the site of the new Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga. While it looks like it could be small in scale, the water is probably 50 feet across.













