wired.co.uk
November 28, 2014
British cinematographer Danny Cooke has captured the abandoned city of Pripyat in the Chernobyl Zone Of Alienation on film using a drone.
Cooke shot the footage when he was in Chernobyl on assignment with CBS, and flew the drone over and around the city to capture the state of decay it is in. Pripyat is in some ways a ghost town -- it has been a long time since anyone lived there -- but at the same time, it is a tourist attraction and it does not remain perfectly preserved or untouched. Due to fast-decaying isotopes, Pripyat now has low enough levels of radiation for people to explore, so there are plenty of visual representations available of what the city looks like.
Cooke's video, however, shows the city from a different perspective -- from above, from below from side-on. Perhaps one of the most striking things about Pripyat when it's observed from above is how it has been reclaimed by nature. Despite the Chernobyl
nuclear disaster and the departure of humans, life went on there and even flourished. Plants and trees and birds took over where human development ceased. "Chernobyl is one of the most interesting and dangerous places I've been," says Cooke, writing on his Vimeo page. "I can't imagine how terrifying it would have been for the hundreds of thousands of locals who evacuated.
"During my stay, I met so many amazing people, one of which was my guide Yevgein, also known as a 'Stalker'. We spent the week together exploring Chernobyl and the nearby abandoned city of Prypiat. There was something serene, yet highly disturbing about this place."
The potential of drones to help out not just after disaster situations, but amidst them has been widely talked about and the film does give you some idea of what a clear vision they could provide of areas that humans couldn't otherwise enter.
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