Pictures of the week: Beaches, by Gray Malin

From this vantage point, you can’t see many bare bottoms, but that’s not really the point. Gray Malin’s beaches are abstract landscapes that home in on colour, pattern and form, rather than sandy limbs and salty hair. → Photograph: Gray Malin

'I love the composition of beaches from the air,' says Malin, who has photographed them in this way the world over. As photography assignments go, there are worse. 'Beaches are universally appealing,' he says. 'There’s even beauty in empty sunloungers. I’m drawn to the uniform repetition of umbrellas, towels and tiny figures that you don’t see from the Earth.' → Photograph: Gray Malin

Malin charters helicopters and circles coastlines in search of interesting spots, peopled or empty – something that sunbathers enjoying a peaceful doze must really appreciate. → Photograph: Gray Malin

The trickiest part of each shoot isn’t getting the light levels right (beaches are brighter than sea water), or hair whipping in his face as he hangs out of the side of the chopper, or camera shake, but finding a decent pilot. → Photograph: Gray Malin

That, and navigating countries’ various aerial height restrictions. Malin’s next assignment is the Italian coast, followed in December, he hopes, by Antarctica. If he pulls that off, he will have photographed beaches on all seven continents. → Photograph: Gray Malin

The series, A la Plage, A la Piscine, started life in Las Vegas, when Malin photographed his hotel’s swimming pool from his top-floor room. He then shot pools in Miami, among other cities, before turning his attention to the sea. → Photograph: Gray Malin

Viewed as a whole, his beach photographs evoke the thrill of summer beside the seaside – high noon shadows, pop colour and scorching sand – like nothing else. → Photograph: Gray Malin

But their seagull’s-eye perspective also draws attention to humans’ compulsion to cluster at the oceans’ edges and toast in the sun. → Photograph: Gray Malin

You wonder what the gulls make of us. Photograph: Gray Malin