Here’s the long version of the video we made with Air New Zealand. Enjoy!
Daily Photo – The Water Mill in Hobbiton
I was lucky to get permission to fly here on the Hobbiton Movie Set. They are pretty strict about drones nowadays, and they get more and more strict each year. It helps if you have a portfolio or a showreel you can share. It also helps if you offer to share the footage with the property.
This is horrible advice for grownups themselves, but great advice for the kids! Anyway, whenever we travel with the kids, I just get them as many snacks as possible, whenever they want them. It’s amazing how much food just keeps them happy and cooperative. My wife completely disagrees, of course, and she thinks it will teach them bad habits. I keep telling her that the bad habits are totally the best, and they can change those bad habits later. In the meantime, at least they are happy and cooperative!
Daily Photo – High Above the Baths
After we finished our hike through the Baths, we went up to a little restaurant on the top. And since the kids never turn down the chance to get a snack, they went snacking crazy while I stepped out on the balcony to take this flight. I didn’t get too risky… I could have gone a lot farther, but I was very happy with this shot.
I’m expecting to hear some news from DJI any time now… for a while there, they had an announcement about new quads every few months or so… We must be getting close to a new version.
Daily Photo – Along Highway 1 in California
As far as road trips go, I figure this is one of the best in the world. Highway 1 hugs the coast for hundreds of miles and there are not any bad photos, anywhere! In fact, there are so many great places to pull over and take photos, it can be a little overwhelming. I took this one with the quadcopter… just getting up in the air a few hundred feet gives yet another great view.
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!
It’s always a pain to carry around a quadcopter with you, but worth it when you have the right conditions. I did this with the Phantom 4, but I’ve thought about getting the smaller one to make it more convenient. My friend used his with me in Barcelona, and it was pretty much just as good. Well, I’ll wait a little while before I decide… I feel like DJI announces like 5 new products a year, so something else big may be coming out soon!
Aurora HDR 2018 – New Features
Take a look at some of the new features in Aurora HDR 2018, including the rather cool HDR Details Boost sliders.
Daily Photo – Beautiful Cinque Terre from Above
This is an area I would certainly like to return to for an extended period. It’s so beautiful and peaceful around here. And the food… oh the food. I mean, you pretty much can’t go wrong with Italian food anywhere, but this is the kind of small-town place where it is extra authentic… Okay, I need to finish this post now because it’s starting to make me kind of hungry!
Aurora HDR 2018 is now available for both Mac AND Windows! That’s right, the world’s leading HDR photography software has been entirely redesigned with exciting new features, improved user interface, speed improvements, Windows support and more. I’ve been using it a ton and I think you’ll be blown away!
Current users of Aurora HDR should check this link to see if you qualify for the upgrade price. New users can purchase Aurora HDR 2018 and my new Aurora HDR tutorial in my online store.
Already own Aurora HDR Pro and want to upgrade? Click here to find out if you qualify.
Sneak Peek Inside Aurora HDR 2018
Below is a sneak peek video I made that shows off just SOME of the new features!
In other news… Art of Tidying
I just finished listening to a good podcast by Tim Ferris about the Art of Tidying with Japanese-neatness-guru Marie Kondo. Here’s a link!
Daily Photo – Flying Over the Entrance to Milford Sound
This is a panorama I took right after coming out of the tunnel through the mountain to Milford Sound. It’s such a long drive from Queenstown to Milford Sound (about 4 hours), and seeing this after the tunnel is always extremely rewarding. Don’t get me wrong… the whole drive itself is beautiful (it’s New Zealand!) but after getting through this tunnel, it’s like you enter a different world. It’s basically the only way to get into the fjords unless you fly, which I haven’t tried yet. I do have it on my bucket list to take Over the Top and Choppy on a joy-ride over there to take photos like crazy!
I’ve seen some really cool 360 drone shots. I would love to play there a bit more. I think today’s photo would have been totally radical in 360! 🙂
Daily Photo – Serene Lake Hayes
I was doing a run around this lake (it’s about 8 km and a little bit hilly as you can see there on the right), and I noticed how still everything was. It’s not always like this… so halfway through the run, I decided to call my assistant Tane and have him bring out my quadcopter and meet me at the terminus. We quickly launched the quad and got some shots like this. I believe this is a panorama made up of four different photos.
I recommend making your HDR from a single RAW file. I no longer do multiple brackets for quadcopter shots for the simple reason that it adds more noise.
Daily Photo – The old dining cottage in Mont St. Michel
Oh my gosh – how much do you want to go in there and eat some fresh, warm French food and drink wine? I’m sure they were all loving it… I like how the guy on the 2nd floor appears to be taking a photo of my quadcopter! I got quite a cool video (if I do say so myself), doing a vertical rise from here all the way to the spire on top of the monastery. I’ll share that soon.
I used today’s photo from here in Queenstown, New Zealand, as part of a series of fun videos. For those of you that are Passport Members (Thanks btw – and recommend to a friend if you don’t mind!), you’ll get to see a little bit extra about the animation process in Plotagraph. By the way, here is a Facebook Link to the animated version of today’s photo.
A Beautiful Way to get rid of Noise
Here’s a video that shows an unusual technique I came up with to get rid of noise.
And then I decided to animate it also using Plotagraph. Here’s a video showing how I did that. (If you watched the other video above you can skip through the first bit of this)
So this was taken directly over my home. It was made of 4 or 5 photos with the DJI Phantom quad. I stitched them all together using Lightroom, then ran them through Aurora HDR before doing those finishing touches you see above with the noise reduction tip. It was a fun project! 🙂
This was taken with the DJI Phantom. I believe it was four different photos that I stitched together. I’ve started doing this more and more. I wish the quad could take vertical (portrait) shots that I could stitch together. I don’t always like how wiiiiiide the final shot becomes when you stitch them together. Well, I take that back. I suppose it depends on the medium. A giant print of this on a wall would look pretty sweet, I think. But it doesn’t read well on a phone or a tablet in the vertical position. I guess I shouldn’t think about the medium of display so much… but it does cross my mind.
European Highlight Video!
Here’s, probably, one of my favorite videos we’ve made around here. Thanks again to Olya and the whole team for making this video and the European tour possible!
Daily Photo – Lake Hayes with no Wind
This is Lake Hayes in Arrowtown, New Zealand. I try to come here at least once a week to have a run around the lake. It’s 8KM around and a little bit hilly. It’s always gorgeous, as you can see. Maybe half the time, there is no wind at all, so you get this incredibly glassy reflection. This was taken in the middle of winter, where the colors are the blandest… but, as you can see, “bland” colors in New Zealand are pretty electric!
