In an increasingly polarised society, drones are almost more Marmite than the famous spread. Depending on which side of the fence you find yourself, they are either annoying, intrusive and irritating, or exciting, amazing and addictive. For me, they have been all of these things and more, but since purchasing my first drone five years ago, I am now very much a convert.
Whatever you think of drones, one thing is for sure – they are here to stay, and their impact on landscape photography is pretty much groundbreaking. At one point, owning a drone was very much a hobby in its own right, and for a number of reasons they simply weren’t ideal for landscape photography. Firstly, their on-board cameras weren’t really up to the job, but almost as importantly, they were big, cumbersome things to lug around. Therefore, it was a choice of one or the other – pack the drone and leave the regular camera behind or leave the drone in favour of the DSLR. For any serious landscape photographer, there was only ever going to be one choice.
That all changed when DJI came up with the ingenious idea of a fold-up quadcopter. Suddenly, drones were compact and could be slotted into a camera backpack alongside the regular gear. Outdoor photographers no longer had to make that agonising choice about which camera to leave at home, and with drone technology improving, there also wasn’t so much of a compromise on the photography front. Rolling forward to the present day, the fold-up design has been refined and the product range expanded, meaning there is now a whole fleet of compact drones for us photographers to use to complement our land-based photography with a host of new aerial perspectives.
Read more to safely and sensibly harness this revolutionary new technology in issue 306 of OP.