1. The dome hiding on Collins Street
Thousands of people walk under 333 Collins Street every day without knowing there's an ornate copper dome on top of it. From directly above, it's one of the most striking pieces of architecture in the CBD, a Victorian-era crown surrounded by glass towers. I've written a whole article on its history; the short version is that the best view of one of Melbourne's finest buildings is one no pedestrian will ever have.
2. The Hoddle Grid as an actual grid
Everyone knows Melbourne's CBD is a grid. Nobody experiences it as one. From 400 feet at dusk the 1837 plan snaps into focus: perfect blocks, laneways stitching them together, streets reading as canyons of light. It's the view that made me understand the city I'd lived in for years, and it's the backbone of the Melbourne City Twilight print.
3. Balloons at first light
On calm mornings, hot air balloons launch over the city and drift wherever the wind decides. Flying a drone alongside them, at distance, with a lot of coordination, produced Floating Over Melbourne, and remains the single most surreal thing I've done with a camera. Melbourne is one of the few cities anywhere that lets balloons overfly its centre. Most residents have never looked up at the right moment.
4. Albert Park's circuit oval
From the ground, Albert Park is a lake with a road around it. From above, the Grand Prix circuit forms a perfect asymmetric ring around the water, and at sunset the lake becomes a mirror for the St Kilda skyline. That geometry, invisible at eye level, is the whole composition of Albert Park Sunset.
5. The Arts Centre spire, looked down on
The spire is designed to be looked up at. Looked down on, it becomes something else entirely: a lattice of steel resolving into pure geometry against Southbank. Shot low and tight at around 250 feet, it's the closest thing in the collection to abstract art, except every line of it is real.
6. Shipping containers at Swanson Dock
Not yet a print, but on the list. The container terminal from altitude is a Mondrian: thousands of coloured rectangles in imperfect rows, cranes like careful insects along the water. Port airspace is complicated, which is part of why this one is still waiting. The good subjects usually are.
7. Brighton's bathing boxes, out of season
The boxes get photographed to death from the sand. From above on a grey winter morning, with no crowds and flat light, they become a strip of coloured dashes between two textures, water and beach. It's a quieter image than the postcard version, and I like it more. Winter coastal light in Melbourne is criminally underrated.
8. The MCG on a night nobody's playing
Event-day airspace over the G is restricted, and rightly so. But on an empty night, the stadium sits lit and silent in its ring of parkland, and from altitude it reads as what it actually is: a colosseum the city built in a garden. Yarra Park's oaks around it look like moss. One of those views that makes you sentimental about a sports ground, which no ground-level photo of the MCG has ever done to me.
9. The Yarra's real colour
Melburnians joke that the river runs upside down. From above, the brown resolves into something better: a ribbon of milky jade and ochre that changes with every rain, cutting through the city's greys and greens. Turbidity is the technical excuse; from 400 feet it just looks like the one hand-drawn line in a city of ruled ones.
10. The western sunrise over the city, from Footscray
The classic Melbourne skyline photo faces west at sunset. Flip it: from over the inner west at dawn, the sun rises directly behind the CBD, and the towers go from silhouettes to gold in about ten minutes. It's the same skyline every photographer shoots, seen from the side nobody bothers with. There's a version of this in my files that might become a print once I catch it with better cloud. When it happens, it'll be announced to the people on Instagram first, like every release.
Common questions
What can you see from 400 feet over Melbourne that you cannot from the ground?
Geometry. The 1837 Hoddle Grid snaps into focus as actual blocks and laneways, the Grand Prix circuit forms a ring around Albert Park Lake, and the copper dome on top of 333 Collins Street becomes visible for the first time. These are structures thousands of people walk past daily without seeing, because they only resolve from directly above.
Where is the best aerial view of Melbourne?
It depends what you want the frame to do. The CBD at dusk reads as canyons of light down the grid. Albert Park gives you the circuit and a lake that mirrors the St Kilda skyline at sunset. Footscray looks back east for sunrise over the city. Brighton out of season gives the bathing boxes without crowds.
How high can a drone fly over Melbourne?
A maximum of 120 metres, about 400 feet, above ground level without a specific CASA approval. Every view in this collection was made at or below that ceiling, which turns out to be a productive height: high enough to reveal geometry invisible from the street, low enough that buildings keep their scale and detail.
Four of these views are available as fine art prints. The rest are still waiting for their morning.
See the Prints