
Eastern Cape, wild coast —
US photographer Zack Seckler went to South Africa in 2016 to continue his 'Aerial Abstracts' series of pictures of landscapes shot from a plane. "The reason why I settled on South Africa specifically", he told CNN, "was because it had a real diversity of landscape going from the coastline all the way up into the desert and through the jungle forest areas, dune fields; there's tremendous variety and real diversity of wildlife as well."

Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape —
Seckler covered 2,000 miles in 45 hours of flying over a week. "It's such a privilege and it's so exciting and it's like my adrenaline is going up and I'm feeling intoxicated by the beauty of some of these landscapes from the air, it looks so different, it takes on a completely different quality," Seckler recalled.

Eastern Cape, wild coast —
"It's kind of like a painter chooses to paint with certain kind of colors," Seckler said. "It's what speaks to me. What really is fulfilling to me to look at is natural landscapes."

North West Province —
"I was surprised by how little animals cared about us. Most of them, particularly the flamingos, couldn't have cared less," Seckler said.

North West Province —
"The prey animals like the springboks, they're used to running from every little thing, so they would run from us a bit but they didn't care too much," Seckler recalled. "They would run the first time they saw us and if we circled or something, eventually they would stop."

North West Province —
"I like to use wildlife to punctuate a sense of scale within the picture", Seckler said. "It's the line between the abstract and the real."

Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape —
"What really looks interesting to me was kind of around 500 feet. And that is where the landscape takes on -- there's this really magical sense of scale for me in that the patterns of landscape look somewhat abstract seen from that height but also the detail makes it recognizable." 
Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape —
"What really feels fulfilling to me to look at is natural landscapes. I photographed cities as well and I've seen human civilized structures from the air but I haven't seen anything that's really captivated me in the way the natural patterns and textures that I see from the air do," Seckler added.