I shot this farmland image for an ongoing book and exhibition project ”El Suelo Español” (the Spanish soil). It was made during my 5th trip to Spain for this project and shot from a helicopter in the province of Aragon. Before the trip I did some very careful planning of flight routes by looking at the landscape on Google Earth. Although some of the locations were found by chance this one was well planned. As in most cases with my aerials I excluded the horizon, since that enhances the abstraction that I often look for. I always look for geometry in the landscape and try to find balance with lines and shapes in my compositions. As in all forms of photography, you need good lighting, and in this case, I wanted clear skies and full sunlight. I find cloud shadows just irritating in my aerials. I either look for full overcast or full sunlight when I shoot from above.
Regarding the post processing I am extremely conservative. I always try to reproduce what I saw and not what I wanted to see. I consider my photography being documentary and therefore I want the viewer to see how the landscapes really look, this without advanced post processing tricks. In this case I made the RAW file development in Camera Raw. it was just to set the black and white point and fill out the histogram. I often also like to implement a hint of vignetting. In this case just by ignoring the vignetting compensation in the lens correction in Camera Raw. This to concentrate the image. Normally I continue in Photoshop doing some dodging and burning to balance the image, but not in this case. I simply did not need to do it. So in all very simple editing.
Camera: Hasselblad X2D-100c
Lens: Hasselblad XCD 35-75mm
Exposure: ISO100 and f6,8 at 1/750 sec
