Dimitri Weber is a 26-year-old French Aerial photographer. Living in Paris and thirsty for nature and travel, he travels the World with his drone to give a new point of view of the latter.

After a few years in a photography association at his University, he became really passionate about it during a roadtrip in Australia, where the emptiness of this country gave him inspiration. His main focus: Curvy Roads, and mostly any abstract and weird shapes/colours that can be seen from the sky. [Printed edition] [Digital Edition] [Official Website]

Hello Dimitri, a congrats for making it on the cover of Dodho’s latest issue! I love some of the aerial photography on your website and I’d like to begin by asking you about your selection process and postproduction. You seem to stick to a very interesting set of tones and many of the images under the ‘Abstract’ collection highlight portions of a landscape that focus on shapes and lines. Could you briefly guide us through your editing process and the steps you take when wanting to showcase a specific portion of a landscape.  

First of all, thanks for having me! To be honest it’s fairly recently that I got a hang of my own editing process. For several months I was struggling to find my own style, one that I was comfortable working with. With that said, I have a pretty good idea of what I want to make with my pictures when I start to edit them. Mostly because I spent a lot of time on Google Earth prior to taking this picture, in order to find the best portions of a landscape I want to shoot. I always try to edit my pictures starting with the framing, because of all those lines and shapes aerial photography provides, then I do some minor changes on the exposition, lights and shadows, before playing a bit with the colours.

Let’s move on to colour. Building from my previous question about editing, how important is colour to you? Are you predominantly interested in capturing colours that are naturally found in nature or is there always an element of colour correction and enhancement of the digital image?  

I like the colours on my pictures to pop a bit. To be as natural as possible, while catching the eyes of the people looking at my pictures. So, I enhance some of those colours during my editing process, mostly to give them a homogeneous look that suits my style. Then again, I find it so much more interesting to work with pictures that are naturally colourful. That’s why I like aerial photography, because I can shoot places that can be dull on the ground, but a rainbow of colours from the sky. If you take salt marshes for example, they come in many different colours, from pink, to blue, sometimes green and white. Rather some unreal colours, that look amazing from above.

One of the most interesting photographs for me, under your collection is titled: ‘Energy’ shot in Spain. What I love most about this image is that it looks like something that was pulled from another planet! Could you tell us a little more about this photograph, the process that it took to achieve it and how you came about the opportunity to photograph solar panels?  

First of all, I couldn’t wait to shoot this spot, as I discovered it, exploring on Google Earth several months before. So last summer when I did a trip to Spain, I took a “little” detour to go to this spot at sunset, to have some nice golden reflections on the panels! There aren’t many circular solar plants around the world, only in Spain and in the US, so I was pretty ecstatic to shoot this one, and the conditions to shoot it were perfect this day!

Spain seems to be your main choice of landscape. Is this potentially due to the fact that it’s a location where you get the best of both worlds: vast landscapes coupled with beautifully rural towns and cities?

Honestly, I didn’t know much of the landscapes of Spain prior to this trip I did in August 2020. I was traveling in the South of France and was going to take a ferry to Mallorca, so I decided to take a few extra days to explore the country, and found so many hidden gems along the way. The roads are beautiful and the landscapes so much more different compared to what we can see in France, so it really inspired me during all my shooting process.

The corona virus has made it increasingly difficult to travel in today’s society. Does having a drone allow you to continue somewhat your practice, being that you can manage the drone from specific locations and not have to travel in order to get the shot you want?  

It doesn’t change much my shooting process compared to what I did before, and it’s in fact easier currently because there aren’t many people while traveling around. However, some places I was planning to go in Europe got closed, and the curfew restrictions in France mean I can’t enjoy the golden lights of sunrise and sunset as I live in a big city and can’t fly there. 

As a final question I’d like to ask you about future locations and what photography we might be expecting from you. Would you continue down the abstract route?

I have two trips kind of planned in the coming months. First of all the South of Germany and Switzerland, where I want to shoot some snowy castles and lakes. But it might get delayed until next year if the restrictions go on and the snow goes away. Then the Netherlands hopefully in April to shoot the tulips fields and other colourful and bizarre shapes from above. So definitely continuing down the abstract route!