September 2, 2024, 3:47 pm | Read time: 3 minutes
Felix Gottwald (28) is a pilot with Lufthansa Cargo — and a passionate amateur photographer. He prefers to take pictures on the tarmac and from the cockpit. With his pictures, he provides insights into a world that otherwise only a pilot gets to see. TRAVELBOOK shows his most beautiful photos.
Airports and airplanes have fascinated Felix Gottwald for as long as he can remember. Even as a child, he stood on the visitor terrace at the airport with his camera and photographed the planes taking off and landing. Today he uses his camera to show the pilot’s perspective. “It was a lucky coincidence that I became a pilot,” Gottwald tells TRAVELBOOK. Felix Gottwald has been working as a pilot for Lufthansa Cargo, the cargo airline of Deutsche Lufthansa, since 2011. His workplace is a McDonnell Douglas MD-11, of which only a few are still in use worldwide today.
“I wanted to show how beautiful the pilot’s perspective is”
But Felix Gottwald doesn’t just enjoy flying. His passion for photography has also remained. His job has enabled him to combine the two: he takes photos during his flights and publishes the images on his own photo blog and Facebook page. “When I became a pilot, I thought that many people would be interested in our workplace. I wanted to show how nice it is here, from the pilot’s perspective, which you don’t usually get to see as a passenger,” says the Dresden native.
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He doesn’t have to touch the camera when taking photos
Gottwald has obtained special permission from his employer to take photographs in the cockpit and on the tarmac. Simply taking photos during the flight with the camera in his hand — that’s not possible, of course. “I have to position the camera so that I don’t have to touch it. Safety comes first,” says Gottwald. He attaches his Nikon D800 to the window pane or cockpit door using a special suction cup mount. Sometimes he also shoots films with a GoPro. This video, for example, shows Gottwald’s plane landing at Tel Aviv airport in Israel:
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Gottwald prefers to shoot at night. “There’s such a special atmosphere, the lights and colors are extraordinary. I find that really exciting.” In some pictures, the lights outside blur into a colorful jumble. The photo showing the starry sky with the Milky Way is fascinating. And in one photo, Gottwald has captured an airplane flying above him, trailing long contrails of condensation behind it.
His flights usually take off from Frankfurt and fly around the globe, often with stopovers. Apart from Australia, he has been to every continent and also flies to places that passenger planes rarely fly to. To Siberia, for example. Felix Gottwald finds new motifs on every flight and publishes them on Instagram and Facebook, among other places.