Photographer Pete Mauney captured the hidden flight paths of commercial aircraft intersecting above the Pulaski Skyway using a multi-hour image stacking technique, nationalgeographic.pt reported.
Chasing Fireflies in New York
The project began in the early 2010s at a home in Tivoli, New York, where Mauney wanted to photograph fireflies in his backyard. He used image stacking, a digital process similar to how iPhone cameras combine underexposed frames in low light to cut noise, to track the erratic insects. Airplanes kept flying through his frames while he pointed his lens at the night sky.
Plane traffic near modern cities runs almost continuously. Mauney remembered growing up in New Jersey and watching planes approach Newark Liberty International Airport from nearby cliffs. He lacked the funds and gear to document aircraft back then, but he returned to the high vantage point decades later.
Global Air Traffic Peaks
Passenger volumes rebounded sharply after traffic crashed during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Nearly fifteen mil passenger jets flew simultaneously through the global skies in July 2024, alongside helicopters, drones, and military jets, according to nationalgeographic.pt. Observers on the ground usually see only a single aircraft cutting through the clouds at a time.
Mauney mounts cameras on fixed tripods for hours to turn this scattered traffic into bright streaks of light. He blends hundreds or thousands of exposures during post-production. Some stacked frames show winding paths of aircraft sharing departure routes before peeling off toward separate destinations.
Pilots Rely on Colored Navigation Lights
Starlight mixes with straight airplane tracks in frames where long exposures capture the rotation of the Earth. Pilots still rely on physical navigation tools that leave distinct colored trails on the final composites. Green lights shine on starboard wings, red lights mark port sides, and white tail lamps trace the rear.
Air traffic control alters active runways when strong wind gusts sweep across the tarmac. Part of the appeal stems from lacking total control over the subject, as Mauney told nationalgeographic.pt.
Para o fotógrafo Pete Mauney, porém, tudo isso faz parte do esforço para transformar o que vejo como caos numa certa ordem.
Newark Liberty International Airport ranks as the 14th busiest in the United States. It handles roughly 1,100 departures every single day.
