Pictures of Cartagena

THE AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY OF CARLOS HOYOS
By Eduardo Serrano

Carlos Hoyos is a photographer from Caldas that invented a new system of aerial photography; he built a small helicopter to which he adapted cameras that allow to register any type of situation, construction or panoramic from unknown points of view. It is important to remember that in 1858 Nadar made photographic registries from a balloon which shows that the challenge of aerial photography is very antique and throughout history there has been more and more technology apt to capture the world from the air. Only now, thanks to the contribution of this Colombian photographer, is that aerial pictures may be taken from vehicles that not only manage to stay static at determined heights, but are so small that may be introduced through angles, cracks and corners where other types of air transportation find it impossible to maneuver.

Apart from the remote control system that allows him to steer the helicopter, Hoyos has equipped his cameras with a mechanism that allows him to manipulate, turn, set the frame and correct the focus through wireless means. The photographer uses commercial cameras which undergo certain adjustments and transformations to make them lighter and allow their hitching to the helicopter.

Through this ingenious manipulation of accessories, Hoyos has been dedicated to take pictures with artistic ambitions, specially of urban and rural landscapes, though he has also photographed buildings and monuments. In all of them the photographer shows a great sense of equilibrium and symmetry, a special aptitude for eloquent angles and frames and an innate attraction towards defined forms and luminous, sometimes contrasting chromatics.

Hoyos generally prints his images horizontally, in landscape manner and on water color paper showing his inclination towards photographic pictorialism, this is an old current that was born with Fox Talbot and whose adepts practice as a photography that looks like a painting in its presentation, values and appearance. But it is not only because of the paper of his pictures that they look like watercolor paintings, also the luminosity and transparency as well as a somewhat lyric accent in his themes
His exposition constitutes an interesting amalgam of technological and artistic experimentation that allows us to contemplate unedited views of familiar and unknown places and it seems to provide us with a par of wings to look at the world.

Web site: www.carloshoyos.com

E-mail: carlos@carloshoyos.com