Schoolchildren play chase in a playground in Amsterdam, their elongated, ink-black shadows looking, from this bird’s-eye vantage point, like Lowry-esque running, skipping figures against a bright, bouncy floor. Seen from a distance – the photograph is 145cm wide – the effect is of a shadow theatre. → Photograph: Katrin Korfmann
The image comes from a remote-controlled helicam that took hundreds of up-close photos over an afternoon. The final shot, which took Katrin Korfmann weeks to finish, is a composite of dozens of these stitched together, enabling the details – including discarded sandals – to be as sharp as a pin. → Photograph: Katrin Korfmann
The only manipulation was to flip the children round so their shadows all fell the same way. “The idea is to create two layers,” Korfmann says. “One from far away, another when you zoom in. Then you see the differences: the clothes they wear, their hand gestures.” → Photograph: Katrin Korfmann
In another shot, ice-skaters on a frozen lake have carved out a snaking path that resembles abstract brush strokes on canvas or a winding frozen river. With no context or horizon to anchor the shot, the people appear as dots. Close up, the detail is extraordinary: tiny footprints in the snow, crisscrossed skate tracks, long winter shadows, even the zip on a child’s jacket.→ Photograph: Katrin Korfmann
These photographs are part of a series of similar works all shot against monochrome backgrounds – festival-goers in black tie on the red carpet at the Berlin film festival; graduates on a bright green lawn in Cambridge → Photograph: Katrin Korfmann
A Manhattan street. → Photograph: Katrin Korfmann
Kids dive-bombing into a pool. → Photograph: Katrin Korfmann
Young men running with the bulls in Pamplona – all seen from hundreds of metres in the air. The result is a new perspective on familiar scenes – something all good photography should give you. Photograph: Katrin Korfmann
