I feel so out-of-touch sometimes! I had not been to London for about 4 or 5 years, and then when I got there I saw this huge building! I had never heard of it being built and I didn’t even know the name. I asked my British friend, “What the hell is THAT!?!” and he said, “It’s The Shard you moron.” Haha man… it was such a surprise, and every time I see it, I still feel that sense of surprise. I really love taking photos of it too… reminds me of the surprise of the first time I saw it.
Here’s something a friend sent me…It’s called “IN SHADOW – A Modern Odyssey.” It’s really well done… maybe a bit disturbing for the faint of heart out there but still awesome.
Daily Photo – Over 7 Dials in London
I’m pretty sure this shot was 100% illegal, but I didn’t really ask first. That’s kind of my style, which only occasionally gets me in trouble. I took this one with that really big DJI drone… it was honestly too big and clunky to carry around, to get out of the box, to launch, etc. These newer smaller ones take just as good photos and they are much more convenient.
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In the video below, you’ll be seeing a little bit of Hong Kong action. My favorite scene is that one shot of the yacht that’s been abandoned in the middle of government housing.
Daily Photo – Hong Kong Party
This was taken on our first night in Hong Kong when they threw a big party for us at the Ritz-Carlton there. It was the beginning of our Asia-Pacific leg and all the wonderful ladies from that location put together a really nice soiree there in the bar on top of the hotel. The funny thing was, they did it right at sunset, so I kept leaving the party for 5-10 minute stints to go take photos!
Well, there was never really ONE time, there have been many. But this one, I can say honestly, was not my fault. We had the DJI Inspire up. It was an early demo model and we never really had great firmware for it. We were going to fly towards the windmills, but about 2 minutes into the flight, we lost control. I mean, literally. We could not see it, but it was still broadcasting a live feed with GPS. It took another half hour, but apparently, it went about 10 miles away and landed itself perfectly. One strange thing, however, it landed right beside by a dead cow… I assume the death of the cow was not related to the quadcopter, but I cannot be sure.
You’ll see another view of today’s place in my video below “Life from Above and Beyond.” Right after the scene goes black and Alan says, “very odd…” after the fade from black, you see this amazing palace.
Daily Photo – Visiting the Summer Palace in China
Here are my kids walking down one of the long hallways there. Well, that guy on the left is not my kid. He’s one of the military dudes. Come to think of it, I have not seen a lot of difference between the way the police look and the way the military looks. They all seem pretty nice though; even those ones that arrested me a few years ago!
My time here was way too rushed, but I tried to get all the photos I could as quickly as possible. It was so crowded down below that it was almost impossible to find a clear place to launch the quadcopter. As soon as I did, hundreds of men surrounded me to look at the screen. It was total chaos! I was trying to fly around and get good photos and videos while buried in this mass of people! And then, when it came time to land, things got really crazy because now there was ZERO room to land. So I had to reach up and snag it out of the air. It was quite heroic, really. I wish someone had been filming me!
I made this video a bit ago with Kai from Digital Rev. I’ve since switched to the Phantom 4 (See my Phantom Review), but this video was all about the Inspire 1. One funny thing that was not in the video is we were doing this scene where he was controlling the camera, and I was controlling the quad. Well, we kept getting massive interference! It was a real demo-meltdown. I contacted DJI later and they said, “Oh, well don’t stand so close to the other person.” I was like… well that would have been good to know, fellas.
Daily Photo – The Bone-city of Hong Kong
This photo reminds me of bleached bones for some reason. It was one of those foggy, dreary days that you sometimes get in big cities. I usually like my cities to be colorful and full of life. If the colors aren’t working out for you, just give them a little black-and-white treatment. I can even suggest my Lightroom Presets to help you out!
Here’s a video from just a few days ago when part of our crew went on a road trip from Queenstown to Milford Sound. I’ve been testing out the Hasselblad H5D-50c and you can see some of my shots in this video! We also had the Inspire (see my DJI Inspire One Review here on the site) with the X5 camera. We had a lot of fun with both, as you’ll see. Anyway, enjoy the video! 🙂
Daily Photo – Tree in Wind
And here’s one of the photos I nabbed on the way… I jumped over a fence and did a little jig through a field to get to this spot.
Even though I’m deep in the middle of Burning Man, I’m getting ready for Photo Walk 13 of 13 in San Francisco. Be sure to go over to the tour page to get all the detail
Daily Photo – Flying Over the Lindis Pass
Here’s another quadcopter shot. Two days in a row for these! I also took this one with the DJI Inspire. You can see the road there on the right. This set of mountains is actually one of the lower parts of the Southern Alps, and this is the main road people use to drive from Christchurch down to Queenstown. I’ve been on it about 50 times now…and then when I flew the quadcopter up like this to get a shot, I was impressed by how much a few hundred vertical meters can affect the shot.