As modern technology has come up with drones that have excellent photography features, it’s no longer only professional photographers that can take incredible aerial shots and engaging videos. If you have the right drone and drone accessories combined with these 10 important tips on how to shoot drone photos, you can capture amazing shots.
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1. Learn How To Fly
It doesn’t matter how interested and eager you are about taking aerial photos, if you cannot control your drone, then there’s nothing you can achieve. That’s why the first and most important thing to learn in shooting drone photos is to master how to fly your drone. This makes it possible for you to keep your machine steady while taking those shots.
2. Know The Legal Boundaries
There are some strict laws guiding the operation of drones or any other kind of unmanned aerial systems. This is especially for systems that are more than 0.55 pounds in weight that require FAA approval. Additionally, certain locations have restrictions against flying a drone over.
3. Keep Track of the Weather
It’s vital that you are always aware of the current weather conditions of your area unless you are interested in taking weather and storm photos. This is because your drone can be damaged by hurricane-force winds and blizzards, as your machine isn’t a full-sized aircraft.
4. Don’t Forget About Lighting
In capturing the essence of a particular subject, light is the best friend of a photographer. But many drone operators tend to forget about lighting in their images. Lighting is pertinent because if your drone’s camera is properly angled, you can either have a scene washed in sunlight or blanketed in shadows.
5. Have a Location for Shooting Your Aerial Photos
Real photographers don’t just snap pictures of any scene they see. Serious photographers take their time to study the subject and plan on how best to take a photo of that subject. This helps in getting the best shots of every subject they snap.
6. Go RAW
After taking your pictures, you should never save them in JPEG format. The reason is that much of the digital image information will be lost during the compression of the pictures. You should, however, save your pictures as RAW. This will give you more flexibility to make important corrections later.
7. Consider Exposure Bracketing
Are you a fan of HDR? Then you should go for exposure bracketing. This gives a series of shots of the same subject, but with different exposure levels. Later you can combine them to create intelligent HDR or select the image that best conveys the message you want to portray.
8. Master the Manual Mode
Shooting your photos on automatic mode overly simplifies a lot of things. This, however, makes you as good as the ordinary pocket travel camera user. You should master the manual mode and you’ll be able to take more fascinating aerial photos.
9. Manage Camera Shake
Managing the shaking of your camera is a lot easier said than done. This is because the higher you go, the windier it gets. This makes it necessary that you should learn how to balance the shutter speed, aperture, and ISO settings. All these are vital in getting the correct amount of exposure for your photos.
10. Be Creative
It takes a lot of creativity to be a good photographer. And the kind of view you get from above will give you an idea of what forms, textures, colors, and patterns to incorporate into your frame.
Using drone photography, you can have a whole different perspective on the world you know. With these 10 tips for taking drone photos (of course there are lots more), you’re well on your way to shooting more amazing and professional aerial photos.
