Are Drones Dangerous?

As I am sure you and most everyone is aware by now, drones are becoming more and more mainstream, especially professional drones. No I am not talking about the Reapers that Uncle Sam uses to rain down Hellfire missiles on terrorists, I am talking about photography and videography drones.

I personally own the DJI Phantom 3 Professional drone and love it! But many people are nervous or even scared of drones after all of the negative coverage on the news, especially on TV. They hear stories about drones falling on people or crashing into objects and wreaking havoc on innocent people.

People are afraid of many things, and thanks to all the negative press, many people are afraid of drones. They are paranoid that someone is using a drone to film them in the shower, or in some other "Peeping Tom" fashion, or that a drone will fall out of the sky and hit them or their children in the head.

Still from video I shot in Barnesville, Ga with my Phantom 3

The truth is drones are no more dangerous that anything else and safer than cars, yet you drive your car all over town every day and never give another thought about it. The incidents of drones crashing are the exception, not the norm as a general rule, anyone like myself that has spent considerable money on a professional grade drone will take the time to learn everything they can about it to fly it as safely as possible. I watched hundreds of videos on the Phantom 3 and drones in general to try and make myself as knowledgeable as possible on the subject of drones and safe drone flying.

Additionally, the better, professional drones like mine come equipped with a "Safe Mode", which prevents the drone from flying more than a certain distance away from it's GPS "home point" and it also doesn't allow you to fly more than so many meters off the ground. The manufacturers
put these safety features into their software to help prevent people from making serious mistakes and hurting people or property. Once you have mastered your drone and honed your piloting skills, you can take it out of "Safe Mode" and then you can fly mine up to 2 miles from the take off point and fly to the maximum legal altitude which is 400 feet in the U.S.

The point I am making is that drones, like many other items are just another tool in a professional photographer's bag. A drone can be dangerous, but why live in fear of something happening when the chances are Slim to None and Slim is out of town. I personally have practiced with mine a lot while nowhere near people or property, I also use and recommend an app call UAV Forecast, which uses your GPS location to tell you if the weather is suitable for flying or not.

Railcar I shot in Barnesville, Ga with my Phantom 3

Most anyone that is a serious drone photographer or videographer is going to spend considerable time learning everything they can about their new gear before they ever use it out near people or objects that it could cause harm to, no one want to pose a risk to the health and well-being of others on purpose and most of us also buy special drone insurance just in case something does go wrong. Many of you probably don't even realize that a lot of your favorite TV shows and movies now use professional drones with professional "pilots" flying them to film.

With the enormous cost in making a block-buster movie these days, studios look to save money any way they can and a $1,000-$5,000 drone that be used over and over again is way more cost effective than say a $60,000 a day camera boom truck. Just as many of you might not be aware, but the GoPro action camera is also used by many studios for shooting TV shows and movies because again a few $300-$400 GoPros mounted on car bumpers for chase scenes are way cheaper and the GoPro is capable of extremely high-quality video and stills with it's 12MP camera capable of 1080p or even 4k HD video as the new model is capable of and so is my drone.

If there is one thing I want you the reader to take away from this week's post is that drones are nothing more than another camera "body" and most of them are being flown by professionals who take flying and filming with them as seriously as any other photographer using any other conventional camera body and lens combination. So, next time you are out at a skate park or some vacation spot like a beach in Florida and see someone flying one of these professional drones, instead of being afraid of the drone, walk over and strike up a conversation with them.
I have people walk up to me and ask me about mine all the time and many times they ask me to shoot some footage or stills of them.

Keep in mine that the media loves to blow things out of proportion as they are looking for ratings and sensationalism and less about sharing the truth on a subject. Now get out there and check out some drone photographers, or rent one and try it out for yourself!

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A New Year, New Opportunities

With the start on Friday of the 2016 calendar year we are faced with new opportunities as photographers. This is a good time to reflect on the past year and what worked, what didn’t and what you can do to change things up in the New Year.

Maybe you have an idea for a new personal project, or want to have your first exhibit of your work in a local gallery. Now is the time to be making those plans and working on making them reality.

As photographers, we must alway be learning new things, trying new things and challenging ourselves to be better, more creative and more business minded if we want to do this as our chosen career. Don’t let yourself get caught up in the hype of new camera gear coming out in 2016 with new bells and whistles, remember my earlier blog post about it not being about the camera.

Build on the the skills you know, become a master at what you do, but also learn new things. Don’t let yourself become stuck in a rut only doing one or two things when it comes to photography. You need to learn to be versatile and ready to tackle anything new head on.

One of the things I want you to avoid in 2016 is changing gear unless it’s absolutely necessary to your business. I have read article after article on pros who have started out on Canon or Nikon and sold all they had and switched to the other, or to Fuji, or Sony, only to eventually switch back. It’s a total waste of money to do silly things like this, so unless you have tons of cash to burn, don’t do it.

Generally, you are better off once you choose the system you are going to work with, to master it and stick with it. If you invest tens of thousands of dollars in bodies and lenses and then decide to switch systems, you have to sell all your gear at a loss because it’s used and buy all new again. Stick with what you have and learn to make it work for what you need.

You did’t originally choose the platform with the best high ISO, low light capabilities, then get better glass, like F/2.8 or wider lenses to compensate for that. Better glass is always a sound investment as you can use it over and over again for years on body after body.
For me personally, since I was side-lined by a bad car accident in October, I am dedicating my time and energy into drone photography for now. With my back messed up, I cannot walk a lot or stand for hours shooting right now, so I am learning and studying drones as a platform. I have already been working with three different systems to learn and train on and will be buying my first DJI Phantom 3 this coming week, so look for more articles and posts on my work with this new aerial platform in the coming weeks and months.

I can work with the drone platform, especially the Phantom 3 platform as it has the most intelligent systems of any drone on the market for photography. It can be set to basically fly itself so I can concentrate on operating the camera to capture great stills and stunning videos. All while sitting fairly comfortably in a chair, allowing my back to heal from my surgeries.

So, for 2016, I want you to get out there and take the bull by the horns and move yourself forward as a professional photographer and business owner. Expand your horizons, learn new skills, make your clients happy and LOVE what you do!

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Drones or Aerial Photography Platforms

This week I want to talk about one of the latest styles in photography, drones or aerial photography platforms. As I am sure most of you are aware, drones have become more and more popular not only as a “toy” like the AirHogs for kids but also the professional drones like the DJI series, which are made for professional photography and cinematography.

This year for Christmas, if you went into ANY of the local stores here in the ATL area that carried RC items, all of them were sold out of drones about a week before Christmas. You’ll also know from my post last week that the FAA just started requiring drone owners to register themselves with the FFA and received a unique FAA ID in order to fly them legally even for hobby.

As someone who loves to photograph landscapes and my Forgotten Pieces of Georgia series, I am embracing the unique perspective you can obtain with a drone. I recently bought a fairly large unit called the Syma X8C, which is the same size and shape as the more popular DJI Phantom series, but at a fraction of the cost. I bought one of these models as most do as a starter drone to learn on and get used to the controls and flying in general. Now I AM planning to move up to the DJI Phantom 3 Advanced, which runs around $1,000 the first part of 2016. My little Syma came with a fairly low quality 2MP camera that can shoot videos and stills and do so from the radio transmitter, but you can modify the unit to carry the GoPro Hero 3+ and other such action cameras and I will be doing that mod to mine as soon as the parts arrive.

Now, what makes the DJI Phantom 3 such an expensive platform? Well the folks at DJI have purposely built the Phantom line with photographer’s in mind. It is capable of take off and landing on it’s own. You can upload GPS WayPoints to the drone to make it follow a specific route and shoot video or stills. It is basically a “smart drone” which means the machine itself can do ALL of the flying, while you the operator concentrate on just shooting with the onboard camera. The Phantoms can come equipped with a 12-16MP high resolution camera that can shoot anywhere from 2.7K to 4K HD video.

The Phantom units and some of the cheaper ones like mine also have FPV (First Person Viewing), which means it can beam what the camera sees live back to ground and onto your iPhone or Android device so you can use them as a remote Electronic Viewfinder and frame your shots properly. DJI’s drones are becoming especially popular with studios as a typical camera boom truck that a studio will rent for shooting a movie, runs around $60,000 a day to rent. Now this cost can be greatly reduced as the studio can buy even the most expensive Inspire 1 professional cinematography drone from DJI at $5,000 a piece and get the same shots they would get with that boom truck for way less money. They can buy 5 or 6 of these drones and use them over and over for movie after movie.

So, how good are the DJI Phantom photography platforms? Well look at the images here or videos online and jude for yourself. Here is a beautiful video from Kauai, HA and he shot all of it on the Phantom 3 Professional at 4K HD video.





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Drones and FAA Registration

So this weekend I wanted to write about something a little different, drones. Drone have become more and more popular especially in photography because they offer a unique new perspective, allowing photographers to photograph from up high or in areas hard to reach by foot.

One of the most popular drones for photography these days are the DJI Phantom series and with good reason. The company that makes this particular drone has done everything in their power to make their drone the most intelligent model on the market. With smart take off and landing capabilities, “follow me” the ability to upload pre-determined way-points for the drone to follow, they have made flying this model kind of “idiot-proof”, so that you can concentrate on taking amazing photos or videos and not worry about keeping the drone in the sky and stable.

Now, of course with drones and their ability to go and photograph basically anywhere, they have caused some controversy, especially when it comes to people’s personal privacy and where drones should and should not be allowed to go and photograph or shoot video. So, now the FAA has stepped in and set up rules and guidelines for the use of drones, also known as Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) for short. For now, the FAA has set up registration for drones that are being used for hobby only via their website. For those that use them for business, you need to obtain a special exemption as they will not have the complete rules, regulations and registration system in place for business use until mid-2016.

Now as far as registration is concerned, it is officially open as of Monday December 21st, 2015 and is fairly basic. All you have to supply to the FAA is your name, address and email address. No information on the make or model of your drone or drones. When you register, you will receive a unique FAA ID number that you must put on ALL of your drones so that they can be identified. They will also email you a certificate that you MUST carry on you at all times when operating your drones, either a printed copy in your wallet, or the ability to pull up the digital copy on your smart phone or tablet is fine as well. The registration is only $5 for three years and if you register by January 20th, 2016, the $5 fee is refunded.

Under the new UAS laws and regulations, you cannot legally fly your drone without having it registered first, to do so you face up to nearly $300,000 in fines and 3 years in prison. Your drone only has to be registered if it falls between the weights of .55 pounds to 55 pounds. You can read more information on the rules and register your drone here,
FAA UAS Registration Page there is also a PDF document with some of the most common models of drones listed and whether or not they meet the registration guidelines.

So, now that you know more about drones and the new FFA registration and rules, get out there and makes some awesome aerial photos and videos and be sure to post them on PSPN!

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