I've done a lot of landscape photography over the years, in fact my best selling images are all landscapes, but my bread and butter is earned in studio photography and as we got busier, the landscape photography has receded into the background. It needed a shot in the arm and so I went out a couple of months ago and invested in a new camera. A camera attached to a flying platform, a drone.
It's a little known fact that my Dad was a pilot and the seeds of aerial photography were sown early as we inspected the farm in the Yorkshire Dales where we lived, from several thousand feet. Its an itch that has never properly been scratched, but now we have the technology and the means to make it happen.
The technology is amazing, especially the stabilisation. DJI are a Chinese company supplying drones to the media industry and hobbyists all over the world. I look up and see the Drone buffeted by winds, look down and see a rock solid stable image on my monitor. I use a combined polarising and neutral density filter in the bright sunshine, but there's no need in the late evening and its then that the drama of the light begins to unfold.
There are new angles up there, new stories to tell. The story is one of freedom and wide open spaces and the interest in the images that I've posted on Twitter has been strikingly different - people that I've never met have commented and retweeted, these images are finding a new audience and I'm delighted that they speak to so many people.
We have big plans for making arial photography a cornerstone of the business, beginning with certification and registration with the CAA so that we can hire our services out. For now though we are creating a portfolio of stunning landscape images that can be framed for use in boardrooms and offices. One client has bought an image 18 ft wide, to decorate an entire wall of their reception area! If you're going to embrace freedom, go large!
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