A different perspective: places and events from above

Legendary photographer and photojournalist Robert Capa reportedly said: "If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough!" But proximity doesn't always guarantee great imagery. Sometimes the opposite is true, as aerial photographer and Canon Ambassador Massimo Sestini proves.

Massimo started out as a conventional news photographer in the 1990s but over the years has specialised in aerial photography, shooting from moving helicopters and military aircraft, hundreds of metres up in the air.

His images depict oceans, landscapes and cityscapes from a perspective very few people otherwise get to see. He has captured the well-documented beauty of Tuscany afresh for the region's tourist board, and photographed the Italian Air Force aerobatic team, the Frecce Tricolori, above breathtaking mountain landscapes and over cities at night.

His photos have also brought a unique frame of reference and sense of scale to significant news stories, including the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005 and the capsized Costa Concordia cruise ship in 2012. His iconic aerial shot of hundreds of refugees crowded onto a boat crossing the Mediterranean, which offered a new way of visualising the migrant crisis, won second prize in the General News, Singles category in the 2015 World Press Photo contest.

Here, Massimo talks about the power of different viewpoints and the practicalities of his gravity-defying way of working.

"Photographing from very far away puts you into a situation in a more striking, memorable way than from close up because it's an unusual perspective. It's difficult to do something new in photography, especially today when everyone who has a smartphone can take pictures.

"Everything that happens today is photographed, and not only by professionals. It's a threat to our survival as photojournalists. But if you can shoot from high above with a big telephoto lens, whether it's an election, a wedding, an earthquake or a protest, you can bring home images that will have real impact."

"In the early 1990s, I was working as an international news photographer and covering the Mafia killing of Sicilian judge Giovanni Falcone. At the scene, I found that I was in a queue right next to all my colleagues. No one would buy my pictures if they were exactly the same as the ones shot by the photographer from Agence France-Presse. So I thought, 'What can I do?' I realised that if I could get up into the sky with a 500mm or 600mm telephoto lens, I could produce something different. The bomb explosion that killed Falcone had blown up the entire motorway and actually it was only from the sky that you could really understand what had happened."

"Around my neck, I have three camera bodies with different lenses. I wear paratrooper goggles and knee pads. I need my aerial photography camera to be very fast and high performance, so I use the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III or the Canon EOS R5 with a selection of lenses providing me with a focal length range from 11mm to 1,000mm.

"I use cameras with large pixels in the sensor, because larger pixels let in more light. You get less noise when working at a high ISO, and it reduces the risk of blurring in your images in low light. I can't wait to try the autofocus capabilities of the EOS R3 – it's difficult to focus manually when you're shooting from a fast-moving helicopter!

"The Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM is the lens I find most useful because from altitudes around 150 metres, it has a focal range that allows you to get close but also to achieve a pin-sharp shot. I also use the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lens a lot – I choose my focal length according to the distance I am from the subject, which is often determined by what the weather conditions allow."

"The camera technology allows me to do things now that I couldn't have done before. I can shoot at night, out at sea in complete darkness apart from the moon and the stars. That would have been unthinkable before the technology evolved in the way it has.

"There's also more demand for aerial photography, not just as photojournalism but as fine art. Working with aerial photography, it's easy to create images that are also artworks people want to hang in their homes."

"Above the clouds I feel completely free – both free from thoughts and creatively free. I love it, I really do."