Eye in the sky Drone photographer Anthony Urso captures Winnipeg in all its glory By: Jen Zoratti Posted: 5:10 PM CDT Monday, Aug. 26, 2024

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This article was published 26/08/2024 (730 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Anthony Urso likes to look down on Winnipeg.

The drone photographer captures stunning photos and videos of a city once referred to by a local band as a “frozen shithole.”

Fiery Prairie sunsets reflected in the skyscraper glass of downtown. A rainbow of Elmwood houses under a dramatic stormy sky. A sleepy city at daybreak, tucked under a blanket of freshly fallen snow.

And on his Instagram (@anthony_urso) posts, among the singular “wows” and heart-eyes emojis, you’ll often find a particular kind of comment:

“I love how you show how beautiful Winnipeg is.”

“Love my city more and more every day through your photos/videos.”

“You are single-handedly making me fall in love with Winnipeg again.”

You could say he’s getting people to see Winnipeg from a different perspective.

“Some of the best things I’ve heard about my work are actually from newcomers to Winnipeg, whether they’re refugees or people immigrating or moving from wherever to come to Winnipeg,” he says over coffee at The Forks.

“I’ve had a handful of people actually reach out to me and say, you know, I’m coming to Winnipeg, and I heard one thing or other that wasn’t super positive, but then I saw your work, and you made me hopeful.

“And once they got here, they were able to see it in the way that I see it.”

Urso, 24, comes by his affection for Winnipeg honestly: it’s his hometown. As a teenager growing up in Glenelm, Urso and his friends would hop on their bikes and spend hours exploring the city.

Eventually, he started documenting what he saw with his iPhone. Exploring was his motivation. Photography, he says, is something he fell into.

“And next thing you know, taking pictures ended up giving me more reason to get out even more,” he says. “And then it was just a snowball effect.”

Getting unique, cool views of Winnipeg was always the priority.

“And this was all pre-drone, so you had to use your two legs to get those views,” he says.

When drones came on the scene, it was the right time: Urso was starting to feel as if he’d done everything he could with his camera.

“I picked one up for cheap and just fell in love with it,” he says.

“Drones provide a very interesting freedom that nothing else really can. Looking through the eyes of a drone gives you as much freedom as flying, without actually flying yourself. You can capture any view imaginable.”

Well, any view imaginable within legal frameworks, that is.

“In Canada, there are some very strict rules that are very clear, but then there’s also some rules that are unclear and open to interpretation, which is how many debates around drone rules can start,” Urso says.

Urso, who also does commercial photography and videography, is a certified and insured drone pilot.

There are two types of pilot certificates issued by Transport Canada, basic and advanced.

Urso has an advanced licence, which is required for operations such as flying in controlled airspaces, flying over bystanders or flying near airports, and his flight plans are subject to approval from NAV Canada.

Urso’s an avid traveller as well, but there are a few features about his home province that keep him returning to familiar subject matter.

“The Prairies can be called flat and boring sometimes, but the one thing they do offer is some of the best sunrise and sunset views in the entire world, because we have no topography to block the sun as it goes down,” he says.

His favourite place to shoot in the city is St. Boniface.

“You get that classic downtown view with all the city skyline and the human rights museum and the river and The Forks and everything — that’s an unbeatable spot, for sure.”

A challenge, however, is to capture popular, well-documented sites in fresh ways.

“Even that classic view from St. Boniface… everybody’s seen that shot from the river,” he says.

“Everybody’s seen that shot from the parkade with the Winnipeg sign. It’s been shot a million times over. So it’s definitely challenging to try to get something new in a place that’s fairly small.”

That’s part of the reason he started looking at Winnipeg from above. Seeing the city in a new way has allowed for renewed appreciation in sights we sometimes take for granted.

“We have an incredible tree canopy here in Winnipeg,” he says by way of example. “A comment that I recently had on one of my drone shots was, ‘Wow, I didn’t realize we had so many trees in Winnipeg.’

“I mean, yeah, you see them when you’re driving and walking around in the city. But once you get up high, whether it’s in a tall building, a plane, or a drone, you really see how much green we have.

“And then in the fall, when it all starts to turn the nice, deep oranges and the yellows, that’s my favourite time.”

And it’s not just viewers’ perspectives of Winnipeg that have been shifted through his work. Urso’s own perspective changed after seeing the city through a camera lens.

“When you force yourself to try to get a nice picture of a place — and you do that for years and years and years — you have to be able to see the beauty in it, right? Because before I got into photography, I absolutely would have agreed with most of the stereotypes that people propagate about Winnipeg,” he says.

“Through that process of searching for the true beauty that lies underneath all those stereotypes, I was able to open my eyes to what it actually is, and it’s a beautiful city.”

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com