#ON1 PHOTO RAW 2018.5 LAYER PRO#

This is one I didn’t do this season, but wish I had.

Bring a computer to do some initial processing.

Before setting out, have some alternate spots you can reach (in time) if it looks like conditions will be better somewhere else (see also: show up early).

Maybe the clouds are further to the east or west than predicted.

Even if you scouted well, there’s a good chance conditions won’t be perfect when you arrive. While in the air, I also look for different launch spots in the area that might be closer to the my final photo location I choose to minimize launch / recover time (see below). I usually burn my first battery flying around the area, testing different compositions, looking for the shot I wanted. No matter how well you’ve done your scouting, there’s a good chance things look different when you get there. I try (where possible) to show up 1-1.5 hours before sunset, which gives me plenty of time to adjust to conditions on the fly. Again, this is important in any kind of landscape photography, but especially so for aerial photography. Check and double check to make sure you’ve got everything, and that everything is fully charged. Another time I ended up with a Mavic battery only charged to 60% because it had been knocked off the charger the night before. Multiple times I showed up on site with the phone I normally use for flying completely dead. Sometimes you can’t fully predict how the clouds are going to look (especially around here), but weather reports should be able to give you at least some idea. Nobody wants to drive 2 hours each way only to end up on-site and have the sky be solid overcast. The 3D Google Maps view does a great job of letting you see what’s possible. Because you can fly, you don’t have to be as concerned about whether the view from a particular overlook is overgrown with trees such that a photographer with a tripod couldn’t get a decent shot – you just have to fly out 50 meters and you’ve got the perfect shot. Google Maps (and specifically the 3D terrain feature) is a huge help here. It’s important to know rules and regs about where you can and can’t fly / launch from, etc., and you’ll want to have a good idea of what you might be able to see from various vantage points. This is always important in terms of landscape photography, but is especially important in terms of drone photography. In doing so, I made plenty of mistakes (as usual), and thought I’d summarize some of what I learned and messed up so you hopefully don’t make the same mistakes I did.

#ON1 PHOTO RAW 2018.5 LAYER PRO#

This year, I brought along my new toy – a DJI Mavic 2 Pro – for the ride as I drove around east Tennessee and western North Carolina in hopes of capturing both fall color and a decent sunset in the same place on the same night. Chasing sunsets is a hobby of mine, especially in the fall.

On1 photo raw 2018.5 layer