Time-lapse photography is a technique that compresses several minutes, hours, days or even years of serial photos or videos into one short clip, showing how objects move and change over extended periods of time. (Photo provided to China Daily)
By combining time-lapse photography with the wide-ranging movements of the drones, Chen has created video works with strong visual impacts.
In one of his videos, Drone Hyperlapse-Shanghai, the city's traffic flow by night turns into a pattern of geometric shapes with sparkling contours. And the boats on the Huangpu River, together with the wake they form behind them, look like serpents slithering along the water.
At the end of the video, three of Shanghai's landmark skyscrapers are seen floating on a sea of clouds, reminding viewers of the saying that drones can provide people with a "God's-eye view".
Hoping to make the best of a drone's diverse range of perspectives, Chen is continuously experimenting with the hyperlapse technique, in what can often turn out to be a process of trial and error, where different weather and light conditions can dramatically affect the outcome of a shoot using an identical flight path.
