Rich Caldwell is an English photographer who uses aerial photography to reveal the textures and abstract patterns hidden in the landscape below him. Born and raised in Nottingham, England, he moved to the United States to coach soccer before turning to photography, and lives and works in Irvine, California. His photographs have appeared in the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, ITV and ABC.
Represented by Vertu Fine Art, he has shown archival prints such as Citius 1 and Citius 2, both 2024.,In 2022 he began collaborating with the generative artist Andrew Mitchell, who contributed to Caldwell's own online showcase “12 Days of Art”.,Their first joint piece, No Diving, reworked one of Caldwell's aerial photographs of a pool by recursively masking and reflecting the image in code. The collaboration led to Modulo, a 128-piece series released on Foundation that plans aerial photography shoots using satellite imagery, then digitally shuffles and reapplies segments of each photograph with the generative tool p5.js.
With Transient Labs' Dynamic Art Engine, he made CANVAS, a generative project drawing on his aerial photography that adapts to different screen sizes and aspect ratios. His Olympian series turns the same aerial perspective toward sports, while his Aqua series reveals familiar pool spaces, including Pool Party, from an unfamiliar aerial vantage point.Rich Caldwell's aerial photographs also became the playing fields for 8-Bit Baseline, a fully playable game reworking classic Pong for real-world tennis courts.
