It's either a carpet of blue tarpaulin or the muddy Thane creek—your most common aerial views of Mumbai are from the tiny porthole in your aircraft cabin. But what if you could soar free, beyond the flight path across the sealink, over the race-course, above Haji Ali? This is what you'd see.
Pranshu Dubey, who runs PixelDo, an aerial photography company, has captured some beautiful shots of Mumbai while working on his commercial assignments. To be sure, drone photography is prohibited in Mumbai, and one needs a string of permissions to send a bird up. "The real estate client I was were shooting for had all the permits in place," says Dubey. That is challenge number one. Challenge number two is eagles. "When they see something in their airspace, they swoop down in a group and attack the machine from all the sides. This makes it difficult to fly." But if you can negotiate these two hurdles, you have some stunning views up for grabs.
"My aim is to show the beauty of Mumbai. Most people think of it as a place full of slums, but I want to show the world is that Mumbai is about more—it is beautiful, and developing like any other big city of the world." So here it is.
WATCH: Mumbai from the sky (the money shot at 01.20)
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