Peter B. Kaplan, a photographer who captured spectacular views from vertiginous vantage points like the torch of the Statue of Liberty and the masts of the Empire State Building and the original World Trade Center, died on March 19 in Wilmington, Del. He was 79.

His wife, Sharon R. Kaplan, said the cause was interstitial lung disease, which she attributed in part to his inhaling debris in Lower Manhattan after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Mr. Kaplan first experimented with his gravity-defying bird’s-eye panoramas long before the advent of drones, extended selfie sticks and permissions for helicopters to hover close to skyscrapers.

He persuaded architects, developers and public officials to let him immortalize their buildings and monuments on film in altitudinous detail. He would scale precarious perches with construction workers and point his lens toward the ground hundreds of feet below, or mount his camera, sometimes equipped with a fisheye lens, on poles as long as 42 feet, so he could snap the shutter remotely and even photograph himself.