After giving myself a little bit of a health scare a month ago, I have been taking things a bit slowly and relaxing in attempt to recover and let my body tell me when it needs a bit of rest. I used to run around the city all day and really neglect food and sometimes water in the process. This was with the constant curiosity that comes with exploring new places, but also the interest in finding so many new places and things to capture. During summer I felt fine for the most part, somehow. And with the arrival of winter it's definitely a bit harder to hold this mentality with the colder weather. More windy days, random bouts of rain and overcast days aren't always the most optimal shooting environments, after all. Though in attempt to get back into things and build my portfolio again, I have been taking the drone out on the odd day here and there when the weather does seem a bit more suitable, and my body isn't being pushed to limits. With a focus on getting subjects to capture and add to my online portfolio, I have been going to closer locations to where I live, now focusing attention more on the industrial side of things. After all, every city on Earth is currently in the process of rampant development, and there's a lot of commercial and editorial demand for such subjects. Perfect for me to capture and hopefully tap into, right?
I think that most of the time I mention shooting things with the drone, it's to mention a few problems I have been having with it. The DJI Mini 2 is great, don't get me wrong. But it is certainly a drone that is getting a bit old. And the hardware I have to use with it is also starting to show its age. The Mini 2 uses the normal RC which connects to a smartphone, to which that allows you to control and see and navigate menus for the on-screen settings. I've had some issues connecting the RC to the drone lately resulting in so much wasted time in locations as I attempt to troubleshoot the reason as to why, sometimes in the middle of the air, the drone might just completely disconnect as the phone loses total connectivity to the RC. Messing around at a location while trying to be fast is obviously very stressful, but that doesn't come close to the stress of seeing your screen go blank and then your drone just either completely still in the air somewhere, or suddenly doing its own thing, not sure whether the return to home function was activated or if the connection loss just resulted in it flying off; there have been cases of this, and it's something I've always been a bit concerned off when it comes to signal or connection to the devices.
I did manage to figure out a specific way to have my cable connect from the RC to the phone though, and that seems to have fixed the problem. But I definitely had that fear of setting things up in more populated spaces where I want to be in and out of the area, as well as shooting near locations that I might end up getting yelled at by someone for. Take in the fact that I'm shooting above buildings here, well above recently built high rise apartments. I'm always careful with what's around me, and the fear of crashing into something or causing any harm or damage to people has me going the extra mile for safety, and that's definitely not something the average person does with a drone that's for sure. But that doesn't remove the fear of the drone suddenly going out of my control. Still, I flew around the area, making sure I had higher altitude than anything else around me. Keeping a tight eye on the signal in case some the buildings nearby caused some interference. There has been a lot of development taking place in the area, and that was a point of interest for me, so I flew around that area and tried capturing a few viewpoints while ensuring I went beyond with the safety of the drone. Keeping quite a distance.
It has made me realise how much I want and need a new drone. Something that can fly around these things, even with sudden gusts of wind, and still be performing with no errors to come. No battery life problems or signal worries. But having so many expensive interests is a curse. The portfolio is picking slowly but surely, but I just hope that my drone manages to survive to see the money flowing in enough to replace it with something more reliable.