Drones and Google Earth have made aerial photography so ubiquitous as to be boring. Photographer Jeffrey Milstein reinvigorates the genre, shooting from a helicopter using a medium-format camera and natural light. Yes, there are easier, cheaper, more technologically advanced ways of seeing the world from above. But Milstein says they do not provide the same sense of drama, or wonder.

"You can see the same places on Google," he says, "but would you listen to an opera on a cell phone?"

Looking at his series Flying Over LA, you see Milstein's point. His images upend the stereotype of Los Angeles as the smog-smothered sprawl Aldous Huxley called "19 suburbs in search of a metropolis." The LA native's macro POV shows rows of sunny boulevards, neatly stacked shipping containers and glittering night views. Houses are laid out in repetitive, almost mesmerizing, patterns dotted with brilliant turquoise pools. It's a visual poetry of architecture, form, and wonder.

"I want to show things from the perspective that few people get to see, that I find beautiful and fascinating," says Milstein. "It’s that view of earth where you see how things relate geometrically, like the Park La Brea housing development—you would never see that amazing, Mason-inspired geometry from the ground."

I want to show things from the perspective that few people get to see, that I find beautiful and fascinating.

The 71-year-old photographer captured these scenes while leaning perilously from the door of a helicopter, often from as high as 2,000 feet. He made the images during four two-hour flights over the city, and plans to do a few more. Each flight presents its own challenges, not the least of which is not falling out of the copter.

Milstein’s taken similarly jaw-dropping aerial images of cruise ships, shipping terminals, and New York City. You could say he was destined for the sky. He started sweeping hangers at an airport in LA in exchange for flying lessons. After getting his pilot’s license at 17, he flew around the LA basin in a Cessna 150 prop plane making 8mm films on a Keystone home movie camera, recording many of the sites seen in his recent series. Milstein spent the first 15 years of his professional career as an architect—he is perhaps best known for Bolt Together House, a prefabricated miniature cabin adored by tiny house enthusiasts. When Milstein discovered photography in a class taught by Jay Maisel in 1975, he saw it as a way to marry his two great passions.

Of course, Milstein is hardly the first to shoot from on high. Fashion photographer Edward Steichen pioneered the form during World War I while serving in the US Army, and nowadays anyone with a drone can take spectacular aerial photos. Yet Milstein makes it all seem new and wonderful.

Flying Over LA is on view at the Benrubi Gallery in NYC and the Kopeikin Gallery in LA until August 22.