Celebrity vlogger Casey Neistat has been back to Cape Town, and in what I hope is merely a short teaser video ahead of a more thorough vlog, he documents his trip from NYC before sharing some typically astounding local (to us, anyway) video footage.
Yep. That’s Cape Town: moderately difficult to get to; totally worth it once you arrive.
P.S. Please bring water. Thanks.
I wish I was still on holiday. I’ve been back at work for 12 days already, but the vacation vibes don’t seem to be subsiding at all.
This weekend didn’t help. With well-publicised nonsense and criminality in the city and with the conversation revolving almost solely around the ever more likely appearance of Day Zero, the azure waters and sun-soaked beaches of Cape Agulhas seemed like a very good place to be. And to stay.
Sadly, of course, it can’t be. Our lives are here in Cape Town: home, work, school, dessicated garden. But I want to relive the morning I spent hovering 120m over the rocks and just watching my HD display.
And so I shall:
I’ll be honest, it’s not helping. And that’s mainly because when I look out of the window of the dull, grey laboratory, all I see is dull, grey skies.
Tomorrow evening I have to reset my alarm to basically the middle of the night so the kids can get to school on time.
The traffic will be back. Properly back.
And my front sausage has got a hole in its side – just from exposure to the sun and general wear and tear, I think.
So yeah, I make no apology for being a bit bleugh this morning and for attempting to live vicariously through this weekend’s aerial photographic revelries.
Right. Back to work.
[sound of faint sobbing continues]
Yesterday was an incredible day for flying the Mavic*. It’s now just about a year since I got this machine and the technology still blows me away every time I use it. I’ve flown over 140km in that time, in three different countries, desperately trying to improve my piloting and photography techniques each time I’m taken it up, and having a lot of fun along the way.
Here’s one from earlier:
What a day. What a place.
When I look back to the earliest photos I took, and remember how utterly terrifying those first flights were – very much like one’s first driving lessons – it’s almost amusing. I have much more confidence now (obviously) and measure my flight distances in km rather than 10s of metres. 🙂
Still room for improvement though. Always room for improvement!
Here are yesterday’s photos taken in and around beautiful Suiderstrand in Cape Agulhas.
* today may also be a good day, but I’m writing this yesterday, so I just don’t know yet.
Much fanfare around the revealing of the Dronestagram Top 20 Drone Photos Of 2017:
It has become a must-attend event for this period of the year. The Dronestagram drone imaging platform unveils today its top 20 of the most beautiful and amazing, even stunning drons [sic] photos published on the site during 2017.
Admission: I’d not even heard of Dronestagram before this. Sorry.
I’ve checked and it appears that I have missed out once again on being given any sort of award here. Which, given that I only heard of their existence last night, is hardly surprising really.
What follows is going to sound a bit like sour grapes, but it’s really not. It’s just that… I’m not very impressed with the Top 20. I’m not saying that I could do any better. I’m just saying that as a Top 20 (or Top 22 if you follow the link through), they’re actually a bit disappointing. Is this really the crème de la crème of the drone photography world?
There’s nothing specifically wrong with them. They’re all very nice. But as an example of the best you can do with a drone? Meh. There seems to be a lack of inventiveness; a lot of point and shoot. This one, for example:
just shows that merely having an interesting subject (which this undoubtedly is) isn’t enough to make a great photograph.
And I don’t think I’m being too harsh when I say that this image, of a woman harvesting water lilies in a pond in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam is the only one that shows any real creativity for me:
Drones give the opportunity for people to get a completely different perspective on an otherwise ordinary scene. But this opportunity won’t last forever. Familiarity breeds contempt. With more and more (and more) drones around, there is a need to do something more to make your drone photography special. These sort of allegedly prestigious awards should be leading this kind of thinking, but I’m sorry to say that I don’t see any evidence of that happening here.
OK, the polar bear one is pretty good too.
I have high hopes of my mediocre efforts being recognised in next year’s awards. I guess I’ll have to sort out a Dronestagram account to get them to notice me. Don’t watch this space.
There will always be new uploads for you to view on my Flickr page. Some are more popular than others. The addition of a drone to my camera armoury has been a big boon to my paltry stats (not that I got it for that).
Two of my most viewed shots this year were taken with the Mavic. And the winner(?) with 1,300 views on the site was this one:
Suiderstand, Rasperpunt and along the coast towards the Southernmost tip of Africa from 100m up.
I don’t think it was my best shot, but since life seems to be just one big popularity contest these days, maybe by some metric or other, it actually was.