How To Improve Your Aerial Drone Photography In One Day

In this post we are going to show you our best tips to quickly improve your aerial drone photography.

In fact, we are go tell you what some tips and tricks we have learned after many years traveling the world with a drone.

You will learn:

• Fundamentals for drone photography
• Best drone for travel
• Basic photography tips

The best thing, is that there is nothing tricky or technical.

After you read this post, you should be able to improve your aerial drone photography immediately.

So let’s dive in!

As we mentioned at the beginning, drones are now the most popular flying object used to take aerial shots or even to record video.

This is simply due to the cost. Is cheaper to put a drone up there, than a helicopter or a parachute, right? Not to mention flexibility.

With the drone market arising, aerial drone photography is also moving fast. Some of them even shot RAW, which is the best option if you plan on editing later. They also record video at 4k, which is pretty impressive. Not to mention the variety of modes they are including to make your pictures even better effortless.

So either if you want something basic for photography or something more advanced for photo and video, rest assured you will be able to find it.

One of the key things for drone aerial photography is to be familiar with the laws and regulations.

Each country has its own laws. But some of the most international regulations are:

• Drone must always be in Line of Sight– that basically means you should always be able to see it
• Maximum Height 133 metres (400 feet)
• Never fly over groups of people
• Respect others privacy
• No flying anywhere near airports and other no-fly zones as specified in each country

It is a good practice to check the laws before attemting to fly.

It is not hard to find the drone that better suits you according to your needs. But in order to do that, you first need to think about what are your needs?

Do you want a small one just to fly it inside a home and at the garden? or maybe you want something powerful, yet portable for your trips?

Those kinds of things are what you need to think before taking any decision. The good thing is that you don’t need to spend a fortune to have a good drone these days.

Here we tell you some different options according to size and prices

UDI U818A 2.4GHz 4 CH 6 Axis Gyro RC Quadcopter with Camera: With a 7-9 minutes autonomy, and up to 30meters range, this little fella is a great option for novices. It is cheap, have a camera and can be flight indoors and outdoors. Check the price on Amazon.

DJI Spark: When it comes to modern drones, DJI is in my opinion taking the lead. On this case, the Spark is a really small and portable drone, which more than enough features to make a difference in aerial photography.

It has around 15 minutes autonomy, a 12megapixel camera with video up to 1080HD and a range of 1.2 miles. As we said, it is more than enough for any amateur who wants a good drone at a reasonable price. Check the price on DJI.

DJI Mavic 2: It might be a bit pricy, but I can guarantee you it really worth the price. Is portable, resistant and the best drone out there right now (if you ask me).

The Mavic 2 Pro features a 20-megapixel camera with a video resolution of 4K, an autonomy of about 30min and a range of approximately 18km! That is insane, but that is how cool this one is. It is easy and intuitive to fly, with lots of automated controls which make it even easier for less experienced people.

There are 2 versions: Mavic Zoom and Mavic Pro. Check here prices and differences

This is with no doubt the most important of all. The first thing we do before going somewhere to fly our drone is checking the law.

I did not do it for my first trip and was a mistake. When I first got the drone, I got already a trip planned to Austria with some friends and I was so happy I would be able to use it in the alps, how cool!. I then took it with me to Austria. Once there, I saw an officer to whom I asked before if I could fly the drone somewhere in the Alps. The answer was a solid No. I needed to have an Austrian pilot license (which of course I did not have) otherwise it was simply forbidden.

That taught me a precious lesson. I was completely new into that world and by that time, there were not many laws worldwide. Needless to say, the drone sat for the 5 days in my bag without seen the daylight.

Some of the useful pages where you can see the laws and don’t do like I did are these ones:

• UAV coach
• Know before you fly
• UAV systems

We have seen many people trying their drone for the very first time in a foreign place or with people around. This is far from the most convenient way to learn.

Read the manual at home and familiarize with the controls first.

If you don’t have a yard to do some controlled flights, just go to the closest park where you can fly it. Make sure there is no one nearby that might interfere with the flight or just in case things go out of control.

It is really important to spend some time understanding the controls. How to bring it back if you lose sight, how to move the gimbal smoothly, zoom, and of course, the camera settings.

Even if you are planning on shooting in auto, check how everything is set up first.

This is our religion. We always try to find a spot far from people, and if possible, out of sight.

By doing this you avoid mainly 2 issues: Disturb or damage people (if something goes wrong), and be reported to local authorities for any infraction you may have committed (or not) during the flight. You will be surprised, but it is not hard simply to be reported because someone finds the noise annoying and of course, if you got too close to somebody (remember about checking laws)

Also, we normally tend to move away from the area as soon as we finish flying. Not that we are doing anything wrong, but we got a bit paranoid and just in case to avoid any surprise.

There are so many places in the world, where you need to apply for permission in order to be able to fly your drone.

From our own experience, most of the time they will never come back to you. That does not mean that because you tried you can fly it. Instead, if you can find a nearby police officer, just pop up and ask for permission to avoid bad surprises.

Most of the time they will be able to tell you if flying is allowed or areas where you can go to flight.

Check always what the law says before. Otherwise, you might be telling the police you got a drone in a country where is banned to have one!

Apps will make your aerial drone photography much easier. There are some apps that tell you the fly zones, as well as weather forecast and conditions. The best drone apps we use are UAV forecast (screenshot below), Hover, Airmap, and B4Ufly

The fly zones are extremely useful. It will tell you with different colors and circles in which areas are allowed to fly and where no.

Take a look at some of the apps, and you will soon be familiarized with the information that is useful. They will soon become an important part of your flying routine.

This is a really simple, yet powerful tip.

When we want to fly the drone somewhere, we check google maps before. You will be surprised the cool things you can easily find you did not know about.

Aerial drone photography is different from the traditional. You are looking at things from a different scale, angle, height, and perspective. The possibilities are endless. And that’s why natural patterns are so beautiful and some only unique for drones.

So do a bit of google map research before. It is likely that a beautiful natural formation which might be impressive for a drone view but not for a normal tourist, is in the list of things to see listed on google.

A drone is not exempt from the golden rule for any good video and photo; lighting.

An overexpose video at 13 pm, will hardly look as good as one during the soft hours of light. This is a key thing you always need to consider.

Consider using ND filters, which we do, and make quite a difference in hours of the day when the sun is hitting hard.

Play also with different angles. For example, if the light is really hard, maybe you can take advantage to take a complete upside down picture or video. That way you will use the light in your advantage. Or take some good shadows shots.

In any case, if you want to have nice colors in your footage, make the most of the golden hour. This picture below was taken a few minutes after the sunset

Although the automatic mode for most of the drone is ok, sometimes you need a tweak to get the real colors. Sometimes, to get clouds details and the real colors in the sky, you will need to optimize the settings for a specific scenario.

Do not leave the automatic mode ruin you a beautiful sunset only because it was not configured properly

I am sure there have been many times during a sunset where you could not get the shot you wanted and got frustrated. Instead, remember tip #2 familiarise with your drone?! This is what that was about!

You need to be able to find the settings you want within a few seconds: white balance, change iso, shutter…You need to take control of your aerial drone photography and not the other way.

Some drones, like the DJI’s, have intelligent flight modes.

What is an intelligent flight mode?

Are modes which help pilots control their aircraft, capture amazing video and images and help keep pilots and their aircraft safe. Which means, automatic fly pretty much.

Here are some of the modes examples we use and how we use them:

• If what I want is smooth footage passing by a specific zone, I’d use cinematic mode, where the gimbal movement is smoother.
• If I want to focus on a landmark or take epic footage of somebody, I would go for the tripod mode, giving me a lot of extra control.
• If what I want to do is an hyperlapse (moving time-lapse), I would go for the tap fly so I just need to press the shutter (or set it every 2 seconds)

As you can see there are many possibilities. I used to rely upon my pilot skills for some shots that the automatic modes couldn’t give me. Especially the ones moving from up to down or opposite.

These days, I am much more focused on having the right settings in my camera and I let the intelligent fly modes to make most of the flying part. That way I can focus on controlling only the gimbal, and having the right values for the perfect footage.

Why? Two reasons: It looks amazing, and you can get decent photography out of a 4K video.

Take a look at this video we did about some of the islands we visited in Southeast Asia and see yourself!

With these tips, you should be able to take your aerial drone photography one step further.

We have been trying new techniques over the years, and the ones in this post are the ones that worked the best.

Lastly, if you want to take advantage of your drone footage, you should check how to make a travel video in 10 actionable steps. That way you will be able to convert your drone footage into an amazing piece of art!

If you guys want to see how these tips look like when applied, you can check our travel videos.

Let us know in the comments below if you have another tip that is worth mentioning.