This Photographer Fits An Entire Day’s Air Traffic In One Photo

In 2014, photographer Mike Kelley created Wake Turbulence, an image showing a day’s worth of air traffic from LAX. Fast forward 3 years, and the photographer has an entire series of images focused around airports – and the results are pretty stunning.

Since that first image of LAX, Kelley has traveled the world, photographing some of its best known airports for his Airportraits series. Spending hours taking pictures of departures and arrivals from airports such as Amsterdam, Munich, Tokyo and Sydney, Kelley then stitches together the planes in take off or landing, to create an image representing a day’s worth of air traffic.

A long time aviation fan, Kelley usually specializes in architectural photography. In a post on his website, he wrote of his hope that viewers of the images would be able to see ” the inherent beauty in aviation, something that’s easy to forget as air travel has become a touch more mundane in recent years.”

Check out some of our favorite images from the series below – and head to Mike Kelley’s website to discover the project in full.

1. Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport

A post shared by Mike Kelley (@mpkelleydotcom) on Nov 8, 2016 at 9:02am PST

2. São Paulo Guarulhos Airport

A post shared by Mike Kelley (@mpkelleydotcom) on Oct 31, 2016 at 8:52am PDT

3. LAX

A post shared by Mike Kelley (@mpkelleydotcom) on Oct 16, 2016 at 10:41am PDT

4. London Heathrow

A post shared by Mike Kelley (@mpkelleydotcom) on Oct 17, 2016 at 9:37am PDT

IMG: @mpkelleydotcom on Instagram; Shutterstock