I am seeing more drone based landscape photographs and I wonder how long it will take before the elevated camera position offered by drones will become the new standard for landscape photographers. Are earth bound photographers now the next school of photography to be declared obsolete? Or will we continue as an eccentric group of earthbound photographers practicing a the newest alternative process?
Clearly new skills will be required to be a landscape photographer. We’ll need to learn how to fly drones and need to do “on the fly” editing (I like that pun) and be more adept on trying to maneuver the drone to the exact spot we need to make our photograph successful. We might even consider hiring a drone owner/pilot to make our cameras airborne so we might click the shutter with our own remote control device. Does this mean that we now have a dual credit on our photographs; "Photo by me, drone piloting by my neighbor?" A friend was investigating regulations on where drone flying is permissible. The list of places drone flying was fairly extensive and most troubling were the restrictions for certain areas landscape photographers love. Technical and legal barriers have not been settled on where we can fly drones.
While drone flying may be new, the problem they present to photographers is one we have always faced when given the opportunity to exploit a new technology. That is how to keep our images from becoming trendy and gimmicky until we discover how to use the new technology to advance our art. It's important to discover how to get past the obvious use of the new technology to get to the expressive use of technology to help us tell the stories we want to tell.
Budapest, Hungary and the parliament building photographed from the Fisherman's Bastion. Elevation is a wonderful thing. Clearly, this photograph would have been better if made it with a drone mounted camera.
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