Alexandre Buisse is a professional mountain photographer who also has a huge passion for paragliding. Beautiful things happen when those two interests come together. Buisse has captured some remarkable aerial photographs of landscapes in France and Italy while soaring high above the ground.



There are several paragliding locations close to where Buisse lives, so the photographer finds himself up in the sky on a very regular basis — he estimates he goes about twice a week on average.

Getting into the sport of paragliding is not cheap. In addition to 1.5+ weeks of instruction, you may have to shell out over $1,500 for training and over $2,000 for (used) gear.

In terms of camera gear, Buisse uses a Nikon D4/D800, Nikon 16-35mm f/4 VR lens, and a Peak Design Leash around his neck.

While in the air, Buisse says he often lets go of his paragliding wing controls when he needs to take a picture, which means the wing flies at top speed. Other times he will grab both wing controls in his left hand while snapping photographs with his right.

Buisse captures sharp shots from his vantage point by using a smaller aperture (f/8 or f/11) and a shutter speed of at least 1/500s or 1/1000s. He also tends to shoot multiple shots at once using burst mode, since the resulting photographs often come out blurry or badly framed (he’s zipping around in the sky, after all).

Here are some of the incredible shots Buisse has captured for his paragliding photography portfolio:

To see what Buisse gets to see on a regular basis, check out this video that contains aerial footage captured by the photographer while in the air:

You can find Buisse’s paragliding photographs in this gallery on his website. His site also contains a bunch of other outdoor adventure photography collections you should definitely check out.

P.S. Your might recognize Buisse’s name from the guest post he shared here back in 2012 after dropping his Nikon D700 down a mountain.

Image credits: Photographs by Alexandre Buisse and used with permission