This is nothing new. There are various areas of professional photography that have long used long exposures to selectively add light. Sometimes called "flashlight painting", the photographer can use a literal flashlight to fill in shadow areas selectively during a long exposure.
This can produce images that are not physically possible using static light sources. The use of a drone over landscapes is a simple extension of this longstanding studio technique.
> The idea was born from a mistake. One night near Death Valley, California, Wu set a camera to make a time-lapse series in the dark. A pickup truck drove by and washed out the scene with its harsh headlights.
> At first, says Wu, “I was really annoyed. But when I looked at the images, I was fascinated. Here was artificial lighting in a natural environment.”
The quote above indicates that Wu stumbled upon the technique by accident but, sandworm101 is correct, this technique has been known and widely used for decades. I know the technique as "painting with light" and a Google image search should convince any skeptics. Add "stars" to the search and you will see that the technique is often combined with star trails.
Using drones is a nice enhancement. The criticism about originality doesn't make Wu's images any less spectacular.
EDIT: The Luminous-Landscape article Introduction to Landscape Astrophotography [1] includes a section on "Light Painting".
Maybe Wu didn’t know about light painting before this happened. A lot of people rediscover things. I found out by accident that you can see the Milky Way in all its glory when you do long exposures.
But yes, this is an old technique. I guess the big difference is that drones can write shapes into the air and also reach locations and angles you can’t reach with traditional light painting.
I feel like this comment has some good content and could hold its own without this statement. It just feels a little antagonistic. Everything has been done before, we're all on the shoulders of giants.
This is no different from the "first" comments in youtube or when sharing a meme to a friend that has already seen it and says "I've seen that already" instead of discussing essence of the content itself.
https://www.photigy.com/school/how-to-use-light-painting-in-...