> 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".

[1] https://luminous-landscape.com/introduction-to-landscape-ast...

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.