Monomad: Daily photography habits, trying new things

I've been really itching to get the drone out daily as my sleeping schedule improves. I've taken to getting out with it for a few brief moments in the morning before most people are up as I know I won't be bothering anyone in the nearby park that is a great place to take off and land from. I'm loving the feeling of productivity and the excitement of capturing the world from above again, I am remembering what made me fall in love with the drone in the first place all over again. This thing is an incredible tool that just never gets boring, to the point where in the morning I decided to risk it all and fly it when it seemed like the rain would continue. Dark. grey clouds overhang from above. The temperature cool and the surroundings mostly silent. Even the wind decided to take a break and had a stillness to it. With the drone, once it's up in the air it's almost like you ascend with it, you sort of forget you're just standing there somewhere surrounded by trees and buildings as your eyes become glued to a screen that shows a world that seems so different to your own. There's so much beauty in these little spaces that are overlooked, often seeming a bit boring. But from above, I just love it all.

The stillness in the air was in fact a great outcome given the lack of wind to reduce my battery life, I felt a bit more free with it and really punched the drone high up to get some views I haven't been able to yet. But my focus wasn't entirely exploration, it was shifting my general awareness of those surroundings and finding ways to utilise them in videography and photography, searching for ways to make these surroundings look more cinematic and appealing for a client.

I figured the very recreational area itself would be a great opportunity, to photograph and film it from different angles. One example was to rotate the drone around the basketball hoop in a slow manner, like an establishing shot of an environment. It took a few tries and this was mostly due to the fact that the wall behind the hoop had graffiti plastered all over it; this is a big no-no for commercial videography and photography given even a huge scribbled cock and balls on the wall can be considered 'private art'. Meaning any form of graffiti in an image would make it only suitable for editorial purposes. I found this out the hard way a long time ago when I photographed an old abandoned outdoor swimming pool in Armenia, it had some words scribbled over it and agencies rejected it for commercial purposes due to the possibility of 'artwork' having ownership, to which if another company used it for advertising purposes they could be sued. Insane world we live in, but to some degree it does make sense. So, I had to angle the drone in different ways, still maintaining a more cinematic perspective and ensuring the wall behind wasn't getting into frame. The same with any logos or number plates on cars in the background.

This image was a bit of a discovery moment for me as I had the epiphany that I could just start using the drone as a similar setup to a camera on a gimbal and get those shots of objects around me that are actually around the same level of height. Not just throwing the drone way up into the air and capturing things from above, but even from near ground level. And this is a much easier setup to have given the improved smoothness of it all with more perspectives to choose from.

I think this realisation also helps branch me out into different areas of photography and videography that I otherwise would not have noticed. It has a lot of potential in keeping me entertained to the point where I genuinely do not run out of subjects to capture in various ways. I have to admit, I have grown a little tired of running around with the digital camera as of late as it felt as if the subjects were growing a little too repetitive each day. I have taken a bit of a break from doing it daily, and the drone has been the replacement that has given me a fresh pair of eyes and newfound motivation for it all. And the fun in this is that it doesn't feel like work, I feel the importance to get out and capture new things and try to profit from it for more commercial and editorial works, but I could fly this thing around different places all day, every day and never get bored of the ways in which it allows me to interact with a space. From panning around buildings or capturing them from above. Using them to capture depth in the scenes and finding ways to tell some story. I spend a lot of time looking on Google Maps to find places to capture, always with the intent of flying the drone in those places and thinking of how cool it'd be to see it all from above. One place is an old railway station where there are older types of trains just sitting around. I can already imagine the lines and composition there!

What's also fun is seeing the areas I've already tried to capture from above while in a different area. To see them from above from different angles almost gives a new mentality over them all, showing me different ways to go about capturing them again another time. And I have a lot of plans for this already, especially as the seasons change: to capture the city as autumn rolls in and the leaves change colour. To capture the city under dense blankets of snow. The changes of the landscape just making more subjects to capture.

And I think that's what I love about photography: the ways in which a landscape can change over time as do the atmospheres they convey. The emotion that is felt within those areas as the weather impacts it: lower light, rainy days, or intense winds. It keeps photography fresh, but the most important thing is that it keeps you getting out and living, interacting with the world rather than getting stuck inside. It's for that reason that I ended up here, I don't think it would've ever happened had I not picked up a camera one day. To which the following events just would not have taken place.