Ok. Photos.

It occurred to me that I could get seriously bogged down in photo and video editing. Especially that latter, since I have no experience in that (although I have taken advice from several Mavic Facebook groups and downloaded this free package). Great for beginners, but supremely powerful, apparently.

But enough of that – I’m getting seriously bogged down in telling you what I think I’ll get seriously bogged down in. Meta distraction.

The upshot is that I uploaded the photos from the weekend onto Flickr. Bear in mind that I’m still learning (and that there was Sport Mode to play with), so they’re no masterpieces. But when I look back at my original efforts with a DSLR and stuff like that, I can see how I have learned and improved, so hopefully this will follow the same pattern.

So – here they are. Be kind, be gentle. And please marvel at the gorgeous Cape Agulhas coastline, which really doesn’t need a fancy drone or a decent photographer to be stunning.

The videos? They – as I eluded to earlier – are going to take a bit longer. However, I have already applied to mobygratis.com for some accompanying chilled electronica, so that’s a start, right?

Droning on…

Saturday was rather windy, but Sunday dawned so calm that the only limiting factor was battery life. I soon got a rotation system going: one in use, one cooling, one charging and I flew for literally hours.

There are lots of photos – and even a few videos – but they need some editing (flying coming along nicely, camerawork not so much just yet) and I’m not in an edity mood this evening. Anyway, this was chiefly about continuing up the steep learning curve and having a bit of fun in the wide open spaces.

Actually, I was going to try some serious cinematography, but I thought I’d give Sport Mode a go first. 72kph and 5000 metres later, the whole shooting videos thing seemed a better thing to do another day, because there was some serious laws of physics and engineering which needed testing.

Thresholds and limits pushed, I eventually, reluctantly, parked up for the day. But every bit of promise was realised – this is what I got it for – and I can’t wait to play some more.

Overview

Overview: A New Perspective of Earth by Benjamin Grant contains more than 200 aerial images of industry, agriculture, architecture, and nature, featuring:

…breathtaking, high-definition satellite photographs of Earth and revealing man’s impact on our planet.

Yes, it’s amazing what a different perspective can offer. And looking down at things from a great height is certainly a different perspective for most of us.

For example, who would have thought that Antwerp giraffe sanctuary container port could look so pretty from a long way up?

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Or that the 2,650 heliostat mirrors of the bird-frying Gemasolar Thermosolar Plant in Seville, Spain would look quite so… swirly when viewed from significant altitude?

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Apologies for those massive images, but when you’ve got a blog post which is primarily about amazing images and when your blog has been recently optimised (in part) to facilitate massive images, it seemed foolish not to just go for it. ‘Sorry, not sorry’, then.

More pictures of stuff taken from a long way up here (or in the book, obviously).

Far below

I love this shot of an airliner and vapour trail, but taken looking down, rather than looking up:

15760017353_7164125ce7_kFellow Traveller by Alexander Gerst

Alexander, in case you hadn’t worked it out, is one of the astronauts on board the International Space Station, and that plane is flying at about 2% of the altitude he and his colleagues are at. And probably a good deal slower as well.

Overhead

Spotted and sharing: Klaus Leidorf’s Aerial Archaeology.

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You can click the link for the details, but here’s the gist:

Perched at the window of his Cessna 172, photographer Klaus Leidorf crisscrosses the skies above Germany while capturing images of farms, cities, industrial sites, and whatever else he discovers along his flight path, a process he refers to as “aerial archaeology.”

And I think the different perspective is pretty cool:

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Loads more from Klaus on his Flickr stream.