I normally avoid technical topics, but today I have to relent and use terms we learned in middle school geometry. Camera position is half the issue with making a photograph and that position is determined by not only where you stand, (that’s the X and Y axes), but how far the camera is from the ground (that’s the Z axis). We now have options we have never had before in determining the “Z” location of our camera.
I have said before that 99.999% of all photographs made at eye level are dull. One must move away from eye height to create an interesting composition. Getting low helps quite a bit, but we are now facing the ability to move in the opposite direction. Our vertical position used to be limited by how tall a stepladder we wanted to bring with us. Now, we can go far beyond the stepladder by using drones.
The extra elevation brought by making the camera airborne is significant. It will bring a greater understanding of the topography and context of the scene being photographed. It will make the landscape photographer’s ability to exploit the three dimensional aspects of the scene, improving upon the two dimensional exposition that we now have. We can access vantage points that were impossible before unless we rented cranes or helicopters. The whole of landscape photography may be poised to change.
Being a droneless photographer, I chose to gain elevation in the traditional manner, climbing a bunch of stairs and a hill to get a vantage point. In this case, the vantage point is from an old castle above the town of Miltenberg, Germany.
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