Not to drone on, but…

Greeting All! Yes, it’s been a long time since my previous post; 140 days to be exact. I can make lots of excuses why this bout of bloggers block has lingered, but I won’t bore you with that.

Instead, let me share a couple of fun items that might be of interest:

• I’ve been on two vacations this year:
  – In early August there was a photography trip to Iceland
  – In mid-September, my wife and I cruised the Rhine from Amsterdam to Basel
• I have added a photo/video drone to my arsenal of devices!

So, there will be future posts (spoiler alert: I’ve already scheduled one for later this week to feature something Icelandic), as I have a boatload of RAW images to edit and lots of fun ones among them.

Here, I just want to drone on a bit about my drone, which is a DJI Mini 3 Pro (I’ll write a post about my experience with this photography drone, which I really love thus far). When I visited Iceland, one of the marvels that I got to witness was the volcano Fagradalsfjall, which was active from August 3 to August 22, 2022. Besides being stunned by the power and beauty of Nature, I realized that there was tool that I lacked in my bag: a drone. After getting back from Iceland, I researched features and capabilities, which led me to the DJI Mini 3 Pro.

Let me share a couple of images first!

It’s been an adventure of exploration to use the drone to get a completely different perspective on subjects that are already familiar to me. The Old Stone Church is very much in that category and it was fun to find an angle that would work well with the strong, early-morning light that rakes across the scene.

The other door that has been opened by the drone is the opportunity to shoot videos in Nature from angles that would otherwise be inaccessible; the drone really gives a sense of being able to fly across the landscape in the manner that we normally do in our dreams.

I’ll share one of the videos that I posted on YouTube here; it’s an exploration of a section of the Connecticut River by the old mill town of Turner’s Falls. As the bulk of the water of the Connecticut is redirected for power generation and flows through the old canal that used to power the mills, one can stand at riverbed level and see the mighty Connecticut in a whole new fashion.

Thus far, I’ve only posted a couple of videos, as I’m experimenting with video techniques and learning how to best process them. There will be more to come!