The difference between a good and an amazing drone photo lies in the skill and the knowledge of the people who took them. Those who take pictures without trying to understand the factors that determine the quality of an image often end up just with a ‘good’ photo. In contrast, people who know how an image is affected by factors like propeller balance, shadows, altitude etc. can often use that knowledge to take amazing images. And if you too are looking to take photos that look professional and stunning, then be sure to follow the below tips.
Convey Emotion Or Ideas
The easiest way to make the photo look impactful for an audience is to capture images that evoke an emotional response or a thought process in the minds of the audience. For example, an aerial shot of a deforested land where a pack of animals is shown fighting for food will be far more interesting than a shot which only focuses on the deforested land or the animals alone.
Scout Locations Aerially
One big mistake many people, especially the newbies, make is that they judge a location’s worthiness of aerial shots while viewing it from the ground. This is a foolish thing to do. No matter how non-photogenic a location might seem to be from the ground view, until and unless you get a sky view from the drone, you will never really know whether a landscape is worthy of being shot from a drone or not. So, start your drone, let it fly over the landscape, and watch out for any interesting shots.
Balance The Drone
One of the important things you should focus on to take clean photos is the balancing the propeller. Since these propellers are rotating at extremely high speeds, it can lead to an imbalanced drone. As a consequence, your photos will also be affected. In fact, it is very likely that you might notice a ‘jello’ effect in your photos. The image will look wobbly and stretched to the sides as a result. Sometime this might not be too pronounced that you notice it right away. Only when you sit at the editing table might you see that the image has a slight wobble effect. Of course, you can use image editing software to correct the slight wobble to an extent. But rather than depend on the computer to create an ‘okay’ looking photo in post, it is better to that you learn how to balance the propellers perfectly so that the drone remains steady when you take a shot. This will give you perfect images, which will look far better than any edited photo.
Placement
Whether you are taking photos of the French vineyards or drone videos of Italy, an important factor to decide is the altitude of the drone. Though a drone might tempt people to soar very high in the sky to take aerial pictures, the fact remains that it is the photos taken from low altitudes that often look interesting to most people. Photos taken too far up in the sky will make the landscape look like a vague piece of land. In contrast, when you take a low altitude photo of the same landscape, all the things like trees, houses, cars etc. can be clearly seen by the viewer, which makes the images that much more interesting to the audience.
Focus on the point of interest
It is also essential that you know all the gimbal modes of your drone as this can help you massively when taking pictures. The default setting of most drones is the ‘follow’ mode where the camera will keep following the drone. Now, if you want the camera to focus on any specific spot on the ground even though the drone might keep moving around, then you will have to set the gimbal at ‘point of interest’ mode. And if you wish to keep the camera focused on any person who is cycling through a path in the middle of a forest, the best way to do this would be to set the gimbal to the ‘follow me’ mode.
Beat the shadows
Since the sun will always be above your drone, it is inevitable that the shadows of the propeller will fall on the camera lens. This will obviously affect the quality of the image. Though this is something which cannot be avoided, being aware of the prop shadow can help you immensely while taking photos. You can move your drone around until you find a spot where the sun does not cast too strong a prop shadow on the lens.