New York Aerial Photography by Vincent Laforet

You’ve never seen New York photographed quite like this. A new series of New York aerial photography by Vincent Laforet captures the city from above, providing a breathtaking new perspective on Manhattan. It’s the city that never sleeps from thousands of feet in the air, and it’s captured with great precision and quality.

Producing these aerial photographs of New York was no small feat. Vincent Laforet used the most advanced photographic gear available, plus the services of a helicopter for flyover angles. To capture such crisp, clean images at night, Laforet used cameras that can produce high quality in low light situations. Specifically, he used a Canon 1Dx and a Mamiya Leaf Credo 50 MP back, a pair that can yield crisp images at high sensitivity settings. A decade ago, images of this quality just were not technically possible.

With such high-resolution equipment, Laforet wasn’t about to put another piece of glass between his lens and his subject. So in the middle of the night above Manhattan, Laforet opened the door to the helicopter and leaned out with his rig for the images you see here. Was it worth the terrifying heights? You be the judge of that.

“It is both exhilarating and terrifying all at once. Let’s just start off by saying this was the scariest helicopter “photo mission” of my career. And the most beautiful. […] One veteran pilot that we often fly with refused to go up to the altitude we were at. He said that “helicopters are not meant to live in that realm”—which I kind of agree with following this flight.”

Vincent Laforet is a very well-known and well-regarded filmmaker, photographer and educator based in New York. He’s an innovator in each field, and we’re excited to share his latest work here on TheCoolist. Here’s a look at how it was created, and we’ve included a glimpse at the images below.