The Roaches Aerial Photography
A landscape photography blog by Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire based landscape photographer Rob Thorley Photography.
I get out more than I write about and I take more photographs than I share. I also do a lot of admin things that go unnoticed. One of these “admin things” was doing my own search engine optimisation (SEO) on my website. If you’re familiar with the website then for all intents and purposes it looks the same as before. Under the covers however I have done a lot of work on the folder and file structure. File naming and keywording etc . . . as well as a bit of a tweak on the text size, font and layout.
What’s that got to do with aerial photography I hear you ask? Absolutely nothing but we wouldn’t be here without a bit of SEO research . . .
As I was researching what keywords and topics I wanted my website to be found with when people search on Google, or other search engines, I came across a landscape photography blog by Trevor Sherwin. Trevor’s blog post was about the photographs he’d captured during the summer months. I find that summertime can be physically challenging to photograph with sunrises being so early, and sunsets so late. With that in mind I read the article as I was intrigued to see what subjects, and locations Trevor had photographed.
What caught my eye were the drone photographs Trevor had taken whilst he was in Cornwall. I thought “they’re non too shabby. I wonder what drone he has?” A little bit of digging on Trevor’s website and I found that he used the DJI Mini 3 Pro.
My first foray into drones had been with the DJI Mini 2. The main issue I had with the DJI Mini 2 was that I had no interest in flying a drone. I purchased the drone to be used as a tool. Much in the same way I use a tripod, or a polarising filter. If I’m honest it was a waste of money. In fact when I part exchanged it at WEX they got in touch to say it was worth more than their valuation because of the condition it was in. That says a lot about how much I used it.
I’d taken some aerial video footage with the DJI Mini 2 which was fine but when I attempted to use it for photography I was very unimpressed with the quality of the images. In hindsight I suspect the limitations of the drone, along with my lack of experience were to be blamed in equal measures. My expectations were also too high. For reasons unknown I was expecting to get the same quality photographs from the drone as I got with my my full frame camera.
Just because I’d wasted my money and got rid of the DJI MIni 2 didn’t mean I wasn’t going to have another drone. The new drone I decided on was the DJI Mini 4 Pro. The sales pitch to the wife had the drone effectively flying itself, which to be fair it almost does. I didn’t have to have the hassle of “flying it” but got all the benefits of a drones perspective. It had cruise control, waypoints, quick shots, master shots, obstacle avoidance. I’m sure if I asked nicely it would cook tea.
Anyway back to Trevor’s DJI Mini 3 Pro and to the point . . . I’d taken some video footage with the DJI Mini 4 Pro but it was still very much under utilised. What I hadn’t done was take a single photograph with it and I’d owned it for over a year. Inspired by Trevor’s aerial photographs I decided that needed to change. If Trevor could get aerial photographs that looked that good with the Mini 3 Pro I should be knocking it out of the park with the Mini 4 Pro.
With my drone batteries charged and my cup of optimism overflowing I set off to Ramshaw Rocks in the Staffordshire, Peak District to become the world’s best aerial photographer. Well as you can imagine the day went down bank very quickly.
The first problem I encountered was I’d left my glasses at home in my main camera bag. Whilst the DJI RC2 remote controller has a decent screen if you’re eyesight isn’t that great and you need glasses, well you just need glasses. Not a great start. You could say it was now a case of the blind leading the partially sighted but my cup of optimism whilst no longer overflowing was still half full, rather than half empty.
The next problem I came across was once again down to me. I’m not being too hard on myself if I said I’d forgotten how to use my drone. I was fine chucking it up in the air, flying it around and doing a bit of video but photography wise I wasn’t 100% sure on the settings. Should I shoot in an aspect ratio of 4:3, or 16:9? I seemed to recall that a 12MP image might be better than 48MP in certain circumstances. I’d completely forgotten about auto exposure bracketing, and the panorama setting. I only picked up on those settings when I got back home and had a YouTube refresher.
Despite the stream of self inflect pain I still enjoyed myself. I shot a bit of video alongside the stills, and burnt through four batteries. Inadvertently, shooting video had added to my list of cock-ups, but that penny wouldn’t drop until I got home and had a look at the photographs on the computer.
The one thing I had remembered to do right was to change the photograph settings and shoot in RAW. When I loaded the files onto the computer to edit though I was still a bit underwhelmed with the quality. The files looked noisy, and a bit over sharpened. They looked very “digital” and I had expected them to be better. With a bit of work they’d appear passable on a phone screen for social media but there was no way I could sell them as stock.
So what did I learn from this outing, other than I’m not the world’s greatest aerial landscape photographer?
First off I should have gone out more prepared. I needed a refresher on the best photography settings to dial in to give me the best chance of getting the best photographs that I could from the DJI Mini 4 Pro. I probably should have avoided shooting into the sun. I definitely should have made use of the auto exposure bracketing and pano settings. I should have experimented more with the 12MP and 48MP settings. Whilst it wasn’t particularly windy less may have been more.
Potentially the biggest cock-up of the day was mixing video and photography. It was only when I was back on the computer that it occured to me that I’d kept the ND64 filter on the drone. I needed the ND64 on to achieve the 1/50 shutter speed whilst shooting 25fps video. I’m pretty sure I should have taken it off to get a faster shutter speed for photographs along with using auto exposure bracketing and pano settings.
As the saying goes “You can’t polish a turd” and the photographs from today feel like they’re in the “turd” category.
When all is said and done though the experience from the day is a positive one. I enjoyed myself full-stop. It was great to be in the outdoors regardless of the end result and I’ve now done the leg work I should have done before I headed out.
Unfortunately Storm Darragh is just about to hit the UK, so whilst my cup of optimism is once more overflowing and I’m keen as mustard to get back out there I’m going to have to wait a few days. Next time though I know I can and I know I will achieve better results than I got today. I just need to remember my glasses . . .
Anyway I hope you’ve enjoyed these photographs and reading about my latest foray into the world of aerial landscape photography.
You can view more images from The Roaches, and my gallery of other Peak District locations.
