I only shoot stills on my drone so maybe there’s more than you think but they are not shared in the places you look
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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In the US, is kinda surprising how many places restrict drones. Any government property, national parks, within x miles of an airport, etc.
And part 107 certification needed for professional work.
Remote is tracking.
Sad how bad it has got for no reason 😥
RID is built into almost every drone made in the last 3 years. A 107 is not difficult and frankly everyone should go through some kind of training.
As for the restrictions comment. There are a lot of fences on the ground restricting where you can walk. And I can show you how to fly just about anywhere. All you need to do is know who to ask.
I totally agree with banning drones in national parks. I don't want to hear drones buzzing about while I'm hiking, and I definitely don't want people harassing wildlife with them.
I was shocked that micro drones in the US are only allowed to fly up to 400 feet. In Canada I can fly mine up to 500 meters.
It’s because controlled class E airspace goes down to 500’ AGL at the lowest here.
Well when people kept crashing drones into thermal features in Yellowstone, they locked that shit down in a hurry.
drone laws
cost of choppers are yet another factor
My one and only time doing arial phography was from a microlight in the Himalayas. Even that was US$120 per hour Nepal prices about 15 years ago
The overwhelming majority of aerial photography is taken with fixed wing aircraft.
People like seeing things at eye level, it feels unnerving seeing something from an angle we would never see ourselves so we can't relate to it.
45 degree drone shots are somewhat in the middle where you could imagine there being a mountain from where the picture was taken from but even then you'd feel like.. 'i could never see this vantage point in real life' so your mind kind of blocks the fantasy a photo at eye level can give you. Eye level photos give you that feeling that you too could one day see that shot in real life and unconsciously that gives people comfort.
Top down drone shots look awesome, for a minute or two, but then the illusion fades away and you're left with the same feeling you have when looking at a Google Maps image.
It's all about what people feel when viewing a photo and how a photo tries to continuously grab your attention or in this case lacks.
This is 100 how I feel. I don’t “connect” with aerial photos the way I do ground photos. Aerial can be fascinating but I am not going to hang it in my house.
There are some aerial photo books, the one I can think of is "earth from above" but I think there are some more if you look around.
I’m guessing it’s more fun to fiddle around with a traditional camera and the whole process of that.
Used to rent a room from a guy that did this…but in the old days when you had to go up in a plane.
I'll use this chance to plug my all-time favorite photographer, George Steinmetz.
I have been flying fpv racing drones (and RC before that) for a while now. My flying hobby and photography hobby were separate.
Most drone pilots aren’t coming from a photography background. They don’t have years developing their eye. The first instinct is to fly as high as possible and shoot flat boring shots.
This year I picked up a camera drone and am starting to merge my hobbies. I am still struggling to produce compelling images but I am enjoying the challenge.
Laws and anxiety.
I love the idea of a drone. But getting a little bold and ending up with a $600 drone in the lake or stuck in the woods makes me think otherwise.
That and the United States pure hatred of drone users, and also the drone users themselves who dont respect said laws or boundrys set which will only make said laws WORSE.
the only famous aerial photographer I've heard of is this guy named Georg Gerster and that guy is the only person who's made me appreciate aerial photography. he shot it on medium format film from an airplane
here's his gallery. absolutely incredible.
Strange! There are plenty of aerial photographers out there making it big. Perhaps you aren't aware of the market it captures, it's quite well paying
Ignoring the obvious stuff like cost and legality, as a landscape photographer I will say that it really doesn't appeal to me a ton.
Half the fun of landscape photography for me is getting out and exploring new areas, and capturing pictures of cool things I see with my own eyes. Id much rather spend my day hiking around the woods playing around with different compositions than spend it staring at the screen on a drone controller. Photography for me isnt just about the final image, its about the process.
This. Most drone photography I’ve seen feels like a fast food - its usually got that instant appeal/gratification ‘woah’ effect but after a while they all look generic and same-y with very little thought put into the making of the image.
I have a drone and live in the US. Federal laws are not as strict as other countries but states also make their own regulations as well and some of them take them to the extreme. I used to live in Vermont and they have almost no drone laws and no airports (you can even fly in state parks). I now live in Massachusetts and there’s a lot more airports, you’re not allowed to fly on Massachusetts department of conservation land and state parks, and a lot of towns don’t allow drones in their parks either. That leaves residential areas or areas that are close to people’s homes and then people get paranoid because there’s a drone nearby.
Also it’s difficult to know what the landscape will look like from the air. Sometimes it looks nice and sometimes it doesn’t.
I was a pretty serious architectural photographer and had quite a bit of success with it. Often I just needed a slightly higher point of view, and so I would use a seven foot tripod, a ladder, or sometimes a tall pole. For sure, a drone with a decent camera would help a lot and would be well worth it, and my late father, who was even more technically oriented than me, encouraged it. So one Christmas, my dad and a lady friend both got me inexpensive drones, one with a camera, and one without. I started with the cameraless one for practice, and quickly realized that even though my house had a one acre lot, the trees were too large to make this practical. The drone went off course, hit a tree branch, crashed, and a couple rotors broke. I replaced the rotors, went to a park—but no park was really large enough—and quickly smashed it. I took the other drone to a park by the river: up it went, and the wind took ahold of it, and it went flying way up river, where it plummeted to a parking lot, and smashed into many small pieces, and I was unable to recover the memory card. So I had about a total of a minute’s fun before destruction. Much later, my wife’s uncle, who is a drone enthusiast, demonstrated his self-flying drone, which was impressive, but by that time I really couldn’t justify it anymore.
There’s a guy I follow on IG that I thought was getting roof top access for his shots, but turns out he was using a drone. I was disappointed when I found out.
I guess I am off to making some wings out of feathers and wax
Here are a couple photographers I met on a trip to South Georgia Island and Antarctica in 2016. They both do some very nice aerial work.
Hans Strand - hansstrand.se
Peter Cox - petercox.ie
this screams “why do people rent when they could just buy a house?” homie we don’t all have drone kinda money :/ i shoot with a nikon e995 lmaooo
Yeah, why isn't every photographer buying a whole extra camera system that only works for a specific niche of photos and often creates friction with the people around them?
It's a head-scratcher!
How many photographers do you know who are also pilots? Or how many pilots do you know that are photographers?
I use both but I'm not good at editing the photos yet.
You are a pilot?
Yep that I am
Drones are just generally a pain in the arse. They can capture nice unique images but they always felt detached from me in a way. Plus using them is a faff, people just gawp at you. If it’s busy you feel like a right pillock making a bunch of noise and it’s more stuff to carry.
Where I am you require extra licences to take commercial photos, some locations need special permissions and many are off limits.
Add that drones don't have cameras comparable to professional gear until you get into the much more expensive tiers and it takes it from something a hobbiestt can dabble in, to something with a high level of investment.
I’ve taken aerial photos all over the world. The regulations limit where, when, and how I can do it though.
Sounds like you need to check out golf course photography…
Why isn't deep space photography as popular? Only like one guy bothered to take a picture of a black hole.
500,000 or 5,000,000 telescope isn't quite your $250 little camera drone?
Maybe because we can't get up there
I bought a drone.
Here they're banned in:
All Municipal Parks
All Provincial Parks
All National Parks
Not allowed to fly them over people, roads, or buildings. not to mention anywhere near an airport or heliport.
Pretty much the only place you can legally fly them is from private land. I honestly can't figure out where i can fly this thing without risking huge fines.
It's illegal to do 90+ on highways, but people still do it.
Accessibility.
- Price - An entry level drone is still expensive.
- Laws and Regulations - For example: In the US, you can't fly above 400 ft of the tallest structure, within a 400 foot radius of that structure. The drone must be within visual line of sight. FPV is a major no-no without another person watching the drone, etc. These laws are ALWAYS changing. Add in the local ordinances and the problem multiplies. You could be complaint federally, but not locally or vice versa. By the time you're comfortable with them, something major changed. Some drones can't be flown anymore without remote id. Commercial work requires a license, with its own set of rules. Getting waivers, especially early on to simply fly 1 foot in the air in a controlled airspace like class D, is a months long process with immense planning required to do anything. Most of the US is in controlled airspace, even in the sparsely populated midwest states. This means, you need to get authorization to fly. You can't fly in most national parks without a waiver, national and local government permissions, etc. The ones you can fly in, require a whole different process.etc etc etc. Basically, it's too much of a hassle.
On the creative side:
- All aerial shots with drones are almost always generic garbage. If you've seen one, you seen them all, save a few exceptions. They are "epic" wide shots that showcase the general area, almost exclusively a plains area of a small town with lots of hills, because you can't fly in a large city.
I post a good bit of aerial photos. I credit aerial photography with reigniting my interest in photography.
I don’t shoot aerial as much now as I did a few years ago though, primarily because I haven’t travelled much recently and I’ve grown bored of my current location.
Posting online quickly turns into a minefield also, with other drone operators debating the legality of my photos. I got kicked out of my local drone group because a member ripped photos from my website, and posted them to the group with the purpose of debating how high I was flying. They didn’t understand the concept of stitching photos in post, so they assumed that I was at least 1000ft up. I wasn’t, but this is the level of petty you have to deal with when it comes to the drone community.
As others have pointed out also, most aerial photos are mediocre because drone owners are simply satisfied by the perspective they are getting. Very few of them are editing these photos in post, and when they do, it’s not of the quality of someone who has a passion for photography.
Drone laws where I live are insane! It just isn't practical..
Landscape photography doesn’t really pay the bills like personal photography does. Most photographers put their time and energy into what’s going to get their next paycheck. Drones are used a lot more for mapping and surveying construction projects than for taking beautiful photos. You also need to get Part 107 certification if you want to get paid. That certification requires you to really know your shit and your have to recertify every two years.
On top of that you need to have something interesting to take photos of, and there are lots of restrictions on where you can fly. Because of how many places restrict drones you always feel like you’re doing something wrong. Even when you check your sectional charts and know you’re good to fly in class G airspace you’ll occasionally run into some asshole who wants to harass you because they hate drones. When you post photos online some anonymous troll will leave comments about he they hate drones or will make up rules that don’t exist to try and leave and “akshually…” comment.
When you combine all the things with the skill you need to be able to take and edit photos well, there are significant barriers you have to overcome for something that is really more of a hobby than a job.
I happen to live in a place that you can see the Washington Cascades from my front porch so I have the luxury of always having something interesting to take photos of. Having worked from home for the past few years there has been lots of opportunities to capture some amazing moments, that are weather dependent.
But… sometimes you capture something amazing that (almost) no one else will ever be able to.
Because of stricts laws around where and when you can fly your drone.
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