Lessons

Lesson Info

Class Introduction

you ready to learn all about drones? All right. So I'll get a lot of stuff for you today. Um, we've got some drones here, and I'm gonna be talking about the different drones. And what's the differences between these and which ones am I gonna recommend? Based on what your needs are, really? We're gonna be looking at some different pictures that I've done, actually, Bunch of my pictures. We're gonna be looking at panoramas were gonna get different special types of shots we could do with Jones. We're also going to be looking at the new rules of composition because, you know, as photographers, we understand composition, but only in two dimensions. We're now going into the third dimension, and that is altitude, which is something that you may have used a, you know, an apple box for in the past. Now we've got a 400 foot apple box. So things were gonna really start lifting the roof up things that so anyway, So we were talking about the rules of composition, how to take photographs of her down...

. Because it's not just about flying it during, I mean, really, it's about getting beautiful photos. It's about being out to position your camera wherever you want. This is an unprecedented opportunity. I've never seen such a revolution in photography since digital. I mean, this is the This is not just like one of those things is a little fad. I hear those guys flying the little flying machines over there. Yeah, that's flying machines kind of quite important to everyday life now, right from the Wright Brothers, this is This is a change. This is a paradigm shift in photography and it really does. For the first time in my life, I'm actually able to take photographs that haven't been taken before. That gets me super excited. And in video, we now have this opportunity to do things with video. They've never been done before. You said we'll have been that dumb of helicopters, but helicopters can't fly through buildings. So there's things you can do with a drone that you can't do. You can actually go beyond the helicopter. And not just that, but you sitting at home. You sitting here, you sitting at home, you can go out for a few $100. You can now get a shot that you would have paid $5000 in the plaster in a helicopter and do everything adds production value to your shots. Eso We're gonna be talking about that. And then when we get towards the second half of the section, we're going to start looking at processing because getting it out of the drone is half of the job you know is a photographer. You say get it right in camera. You do get a right in camera, but, you know, if you doing panoramas you doing hdr You know, that was those days a kind of like the cameras really limited. You can get it right in camera. You can get it all in camera, right? If you do, then you're so it's gonna be OK because you know what? Life has moved on. Technologies moved on. And if you're so pure stuck in those ways, you're gonna have boring photos compared to what other people have. I'm just gonna put it out there and just be that bolt because now there's things that we can do that we couldn't do before. And the other thing with these Germans, we have little cameras and little sensors, so you really gotta, like, wrangle them a little bit to get the good pictures out of them, and that's a difference, really, between ordinary pictures and extraordinary pictures. Um, there's a lot of people taking pictures with drones right now. But if you do the second part, which is post production and you think about that and you add it, you do something special. And currently right now, you know DJs community of Sky Pixel. And I'm the number one like photographer and the number one followed photographer on that social network because of my process of shooting and processing, a lot of people they don't know how to process. They can get halfway there. You were caught up in a novelty of flying a drone. That's great. But you know what? 400 foot shot gets boring. It's like HDR, like the first time you see it, You're like, Oh, my, it's amazing. And then after a while, it's like you've seen it, you know, seen it before, and that's what's gonna happen with drones. I give it a couple of years. Everyone's gonna even now people that I said turn shots. So I'm gonna teach you how to do something extraordinary. Apart from just that to become 400 foot shot that you're used to seeing, You know that you shit out the window of an airplane best equipped for long lens. We're going to get beyond that. All right, So, as you can see here was starting. This is a picture I took while on vacation in a Wahoo, Hawaii. And it's so funny because, well, that surface, like, here in the foreground, and you've got that, you know, like that's a shot that a few years ago no one had seen before. I mean, you could get out in a boat, maybe take a picture. Um, you may be getting a helicopter if you're in a helicopter, you know, giving it the surface. You're not going to get that look, you know, not to fly that low. So that's just a little example that's actually one of my old ones. My problem of showing pictures is every time I taking you on, it's my new favorite, and I don't like my old ones anymore. So there's a few on here that I'm just gonna pretend I still like. Um, so let's get started. How did I get started in this home, Miss um, I call it a mess because I did warn you guys. You think photography's bad, You know, like, Oh, man, my next paycheck, I'm gonna buy, you know, any X man, I just need that stroke of frame. I need that. Whatever. You know, that accessory. I need that filter. I need that lens. I need that camera. Yeah. Is this gonna be the same thing? So if you get into this, I warn you, it's incredibly addictive. You're gonna stop for a little drone and before you know, you can end up with a bigger one and you're gonna be wanting oldest gear cause it's it's great, it's fun. And it's changing its evolving very, very rapidly. So I started about four or five years ago, which seems like, you know, wow, that's just started Johnny come lately. But this was ground level. This is when DJ A is now the largest John company. I think 20,000 employees their head about 50 employees at that time, and people would barely even heard of drones at this time. No one had seen them. People thought drones with things that flow around, you know, horrible weapons of war, but they're not, Um, these were sexually for the longest time, we wouldn't use the word drone. We used the word quadcopter. We used the word flying tripod, and we didn't want to use the word during because he's not really drones. So we used the term quad copters because we didn't want her association with that. But now everybody has to call them drones, because when people are searching for this keywords or drones and actually everyone knows him his drone. So that's why we call them that. But they were actually U A V s, um, are actually these air reclassification is actually S u A b. It's a small unmanned aerial vehicle is actually his proper name. But everyone knows misdoings now, So anyway, so I got started. I was, ah, at home going about my day. Um, and I get a phone call and it's Russell Brown from Adobe. Wrestle is the principal creative director for W. And I. In case he's watching. I won't imitate his voice. Eso So anybody said he calls me up and he asked me. He says, Hey, you know, have you heard of these drone things? I said, Yeah, I kind of heard of them. Um, he goes, Well, I want to teach a class. No one had ever told a class on drones before. It was gonna be the first ever class ever. And he goes, I wanted to a class photo shop world. I want to teach the photography. Would you like to teach the video? And I'm like, I don't have a drug. And he's like, Well, you know, can you acquire a drone? I'm like, Yeah, I can get one. And he's like, All right, So, um, So I agreed to do that. And then So I went out and I contacted d G. I had some contacts and you, some people, and I was able to reach out to them and see if I could get a drone. I actually end up purchasing my first during that to get a little discount, Russell sent me a GoPro. We kind of scraped it together, and then I got the gear. And in Russell's like that, you gotta come up. You've got to come up to senator. Go to come up to see you come up today. Can you book a flight this morning? Fly back this afternoon. I'm like, Yes, we went up there and he introduced me to my Johnson, who we called the key master back in at this time was only five or six of us doing this. And so I met him. He could the key master from the Matrix, and we went to his house, and it was just like, wires and stuff everywhere. And he's like, you know, because at that time, we didn't have HPV you couldn't see, you know, through the drone or anything, and he couldn't tell the camera. And so he had me like we went to Radio Shack. We gotta potentially ometer and I pulled us apart. I'm sitting marks, living room drilling, this putting a potential ometer and so I can tilt the camera with it. So, you know, we modified all that, and I did that. So Russell was the one that brought me in. Um, my buddy Jeff fast, of course. You guys know him. He's being here. He was into that at the time. I wanted pioneers and doing a video side of it. And then So Mark was like the mad genius guy. Not so much, you know, he does three D imaging and stuff for a living. So he was like, the tech guy that kind of got into that. And then I met Barry Blanchard, who was like, another one of those guys that was kind of into that crazy stuff, and I kind of learned a lot. Um, from from those guys in the early days, I used to call them and I'd be like, you know, how do you do this? How do you do that? There was no information. There was a literally no information. And we were helping each other with a little group of people called the flight club, and we would get together. We had NASA scientists, you know, like, everybody was kind of like that level very nerdy, geeky, great crowd. And we learned from each other and we figured things out, and we and we just kind of tried toe get footing. So anyway, so I had my drone. I named it Snoopy. And, um and I decided that I'm just gonna count This drone is dead and lost because I know I'm gonna crash. Is that sometimes I'm gonna fly like a madman and learn how to fly so I would take this thing out every day. The original Phantom actually could take some knocks. I fly this thing around and crash it like 10 20 times. Every time I took it out, I'd see how low to the ground. I could fly it flying the bridges of his number rules. It was the Wild West back then, s o you know, But I didn't break any FAA rules. Just that's very important. More get to that in a little bit. But, you know, I flew around, you know, the parks and stuff and, you know, people would always come around. My guys that are drones like, Yeah, and people never seen one before. So I did all that and then right before Photoshopped World, I don't My first drone. So I was at the beach at San Kamini and I was filming these surfers and the surface of getting and I was following this guy down the wave and was like, Oh, my God, Just best whatever. I think because it was no ftp couldn't see what the dream of seeing that I was following the seven. Any win under ST or many peer. Of course, I followed him, and yeah, and then I just panicked. Tap the thing Durham stirred into the water. Andi was gone, and I found a surfer kid. Hey, kid, I'll give me 50 bucks. If you confined my drum and he went out there, he couldn't find it. I looked over the edge of the pier and everything I couldn't find It was gone. And all I could hear in the back of my mind was Bresil, You know, like you lost your throne. You lost that GoPro I bought you. I mean, that's all I can hear Bag mind. So I get across the street, have a beer, drown my sorrows, come back to see if the drones washed up on the beach. It isn't. And then I get back and I sheepishly call up Russell on my dress alike. I lost my drone. E was like and he was actually really he laughed about it gets all that's hilarious. And, um, and any actually sent me a thing called a water boy as a gift. It's like a little inflatable balloon. So when you drop it in, the water inflates and floats to the top. And I was like during stressful. And to this day, I still get teased about that. But moving forward, you know, we did the class and push up. Now that was a circus. You won't talk about her circuits. These things like fly really good and really stable. Now, the original ones didn't fly as well as these do hot. It'll never much more difficult to control. And I remember we're in Mandalay Bay in a bull room, and it was a bunch of other great people there, you know that We're also teaching this class. Um, and we had a Romeo Duscher. Of course I forgot Romeo Romeo. I learned a lot from Romeo as well who was a NASA scientist at the time. Now he works for G I. And anyway, so we're flying with a room of eight ah stations in Mandalay Bay. And we've got first time flyers flying inside in the ballroom at the same time and his eye on and it's a great idea. Russell, we gonna have sunglasses, you know? Let's call him top gun glasses. Your safety glasses? Yes. Yes, We'll have safety glasses. And miraculously, no one was hurt. But, you know, the crashes was kind of funny because it was the day before was sitting up was the instructors. And we were like flying him crashing in the wolves and breaking. We broke off the cup this before the students even showed up. Who was that? First time we'll get together lateral ligament. And every time someone crashed were, like, I give him a hard time. I'm so anyway, so we did that class, you know, and moving on. You know, we ended up. I ended up meeting with DJ. I met the founders, meant Swift and, um and, uh, Frank at Adobe. We had, like, a little meeting thing. And then, um, that was kind of like the birth of photographers. Really kind of stunning get into this stuff. So anyway, so I'm out there the first time I'm flying. I remember. This is no If PB, which is persuasive first person view, I can't see what the drone is seeing. I'm just flying it and I've got to go prone. And that's what we had at the time. So if you wanted to record video, you would start the video and then you would fly If you wanted to shoot photos. You would do time lapse, and then you would fly. Then you wouldn't turn the camera off until you would landing. Did enough. And that's why we have all these selfies the beginning. You know, we're looking into the camera just thinking about it. I should have had one of those pictures. It was funny, So but all got them, you know, because you can see the person like noodling turning the camera on, and then they fly. And ahead of what you have on intern I had what causal is just just horrible audio. So anyway, so the first time I go out there, this happens. So I'm out there and I'm like, this is my This is my Vegas thing to get me hooked, so I'm bringing it in. I'm flying at the beach with my It was a GoPro here three at the time, was the latest and and I'm flying and I'm shooting straight down. I'm coming back from shooting videos over the water and I'm coming back and I see this pelican coming and I'm like, and he's on a path. So I just stopped and Harvard just rotated a little bit and then just waited And then that pelican just soared underneath and I knew it. I knew I had the shot. I was just, like, so excited. And then ah, so then I landed the drone safely. You can see the shadow of the drone there. And so that was my first had drone shot. And then I went home and I found it was on video. I pulled a still frame from video and ah, very excited about that. And in fact, they started using this on their resellers. They started that had a contest with Adobe and Degen. They used This is the cover image then and I went to retailers, never all using it everywhere. I didn't course uncredited, you know, Anyway, moving moving on from that. But that went everywhere. No one knew. I took it. So when I showed you that all that was your picture was great. But that's the Wild West days. That's what happens. Eso then I became, but also from the very day they want I was DJ articles. An expert. It's like the can explore of light Thing is de g ay experts. I was an expert and so that's I get the little V thing means I'm an expert in its Chinese first, but no, I'm kidding. So anyway, so this is Skye picks up, That's the network. And we put all your pictures. You posted pictures and videos up there and then, um, I kind of I became the number one liked. And then I think somebody beat me. And then I became number one followed. So, um, I'm usually the top two or three if it fluctuates, But anyway, so that's Ah, me on there, moving on. So moving forward, I do other things with the drones to like I've been shooting. This was actually with inspire one. Um, this is a track, so I actually know the target present track manages here, and I get down and I shoot Motor sports sometimes drag racing track mode across different things. My passion is the beach is the coastal stuff. But I love doing this stuff, too, And I did this. And lo and behold, last year, Time magazine named that one of the 18 most beautiful photos of the year from a drunk. So I was very honored to have that