INTERVIEW
Donn Delson
Taken from helicopters, Delson’s images seek patterns, symmetry and balance from above. Niall Hampton meets the photographer with a head for heights
‘All That Glitters’, San Francisco Bay, USA, 2017.
Donn Delson
After a career as an advertising and marketing executive, Delson retired in 2010 and took up photography professionally.
He had also started and sold several businesses, including a band merchandising business for acts such as Rihanna.
A chance helicopter excursion on holiday led to him seeing the potential in aerial photography, at heights well above where drones are permitted to go.
The large, limited-edition canvases of his photos, taken in locations across the world, sell from £4,000/$5,000 up to £35,000/$44,000.
www.donndelson.com Instagram: @donndelson
At Photo Independent’s London show in May, images by Donn Delson appeared alongside those of six other Los Angeles-based photographers. But Delson’s works were captured in a novel way, from ‘doors off’ helicopters at heights of up to 12,000 feet (4,000 metres). To date, Delson has spent more than 300 hours strapped into doorless helicopters enjoying rarefied views of the world and recording many of these moments for posterity on high-resolution digital cameras.
His photographs, which result from moments of serendipity rather than anything he has pre-planned, capture what scenes resemble from the air, rather than their actuality, and are named accordingly, with titles including ‘Feathered’, ‘Turntables’ and ‘Water Color’. We sat down with him to find out more…
How did you come up with your distinctive take on aerial photography?
‘Impressions’, Hawaii, USA, 2022.
Donn Delson
Since I was in high school, I always enjoyed photography and participated in a raft of different activities – doing photographs for the sports teams and so on. I retired in 2010 after a career establishing successful businesses and wanted to pursue my photography hobby. I spent time travelling to places like Death Valley and other locations around the world where I would shoot landscape photos. My wife and I went to New Zealand for a trip and had an opportunity to go up in a helicopter and fly over The Remarkables [a mountain range on the South Island of New Zealand] to see a glacier. I was having a great time, shooting the waterfalls in the glacier, then we got back in the helicopter and the pilot asked if I wanted him to open the door so I could shoot the landscape with the door open. I replied saying it sounded fabulous and that was my spark for deciding what I wanted to pursue.