Execution - getting the shot!
So... you've planned where you're going to be shooting, what time of day, and hopefully with the conditions you desire. So what next? This next section will explain a few things, some technical to do with the drone itself and some about the conditions you may be shooting in.
Drone settings - things I always do when shooting...
Shoot in RAW - Shooting in RAW format is a must if you want to edit your photos and you should always shoot in RAW if your drone is able to do so. The files will be far larger than a jpeg and it will allow you much more freedom in post processing as you can decide, rather than the drone, how the file is interpreted.
Bracket your shots - Either using the Auto Exposure Bracketing function (AEB) or manually bracketing your photos so you can merge them later in Lightroom or Photoshop is a must for me.
While you don't have to, I find the benefits of doing so are huge. Bracketing is the process of taking more than one photo of the same scene at different exposure settings, generally one exposed correctly, one under exposed (preserving highlights) and one over exposed (preserving shadow details).
If conditions are good you may not need to bracket, however, for the most part I still do for the extra flexibility.
Shooting in at the lowest ISO possible - Even with modern drones such as the Mavic Pro 2, shooting above ISO 100 becomes noticeable when it comes to editing. Whilst you can shoot at much higher ISOs than 100, the quality degrades quite quickly in terms of additional noise and loss of detail, especially in the shadow.
When Shooting Panoramas - Nowadays I tend to shoot in manual mode, rather than Automatic settings or Aperture Priority mode, so I can keep the same exposure across all the shots I take, this is the same for vertical and horizontal panoramas. The benefit to doing this in manual mode is that you will have a much easier time in Post production as the light will be constant throughout the panorama. If you leave the drone to adjust automatically you will be left with a series of images that are all exposed for the individual shot, rather than the scene as a whole.
Shutter speed - whilst a drone's field of view and relatively fast aperture makes capturing sharp images fairly easy even at slower shutters speeds of 1/30s, if it's windy I'll do my best to bump it up to a minimum of 1/100s to help ensure that the final image is as sharp as it can be.
Exploring compositions with your drone
If you've got plenty of battery life I'd highly recommend trying out lots of compositions. Try and identify your subject from the ground if you can, you may even be stood next to it having done your planning. Shooting from the air can be a little trickier than planning a shot from the ground as you've got another axis to work with, which is the height you can shoot from. Start off at a low level, and work your way up and around the subject, get closer or further away - try using different things as foreground too.
Sometimes you may start your flight without knowing what you're going to try and photograph, and that's perfectly fine too, I do it plenty, but there's generally something that has drawn you to the area that you're in.
Subjects that work well with an aerial view in landscape photography, some of these you'll see demonstrated in the shots above:
Repeating patterns
Leading lines such as roads or rivers - these help to draw a viewers eyes through the image and can lead them to a focal point.
Changes in elevation - it's often pleasing to have something pass the horizon.
Isolating elements of a scene (a house, a person a sea stack etc).
Minimalism - lots of negative space with.
Creating a sense of scale, whether this is a human element in a vast landscape, or even a car crossing a bridge.
When shooting large vistas, I tend to approach drone photography in the same way that I do with ground based wide angle photography. Trying to include an interesting foreground which leads into mid-ground and ultimately an interesting background. If you are trying to isolate a subject then this doesn't always need to be the case. Try to simplify whatever scene you are shooting as too many distractions can really detract from an image.
How differing conditions can affect your images
Shooting under clouds
Shooting when its cloudy is probably the easiest conditions to work with purely for the reason that you don't have to worry about strong directional light. You can also manage to produce some wonderfully moody shots or emphasise the feeling of a place by shooting under cloud.
Light
Whilst there's nothing wrong with shooting on a cloudy day, I personally find drone shots with good light to be far more pleasing to the eye as light can really transform a scene and add huge amounts of depth, contrast and colour.
Side light tends to give the greatest depth to a scene as it creates visible shadows and contrast in the image.
Shooting into the sun
One of the hardest things to do with drone photography is shooting straight into the sun, the current drones don't really have the optics to be able to pull it off consistently without a lot of flaring & ghosting - you can get lucky though! You can also try to move the sun just out of frame to limit the amount of flaring, or even shoot into it with a subject that blocks some of the flaring.
Making sure you bring your drone home in one piece!
It may sound obvious, but making sure you can bring your drone home with enough battery to land is a must. Flying on windy days especially can make this harder than it sounds, if your drone is fighting 20mph winds it's going to be flying at full speed to get back to you but only covering half the distance. Where possible, fly into the wind when you're flying away from your home point and fly back with the wind on your return.
The third and final instalment of this blog series will be published next week and will go more into detail about the processes I use when editing my drone photos and how to get the most out of the data that's held in your RAW files.
Thanks for reading,
James
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