Dronie Photography

Wall Street Journal - "Let's Go Fly a Drone: The Best Vacation Pics Come From Above"

"This spring break, I swapped out my regular camera for flying photo drones. These remote-control aerial vehicles are floating tripods that let you take pictures and videos from overhead. For as little as $300, you can buy a device, no larger than a Panama hat, that hovers and swoops through the air at the flick of a finger. I took mine on trips to Joshua Tree and California wine country, and deployed them for group photos at the beach.

Flying a drone isn't just exhilarating; it also fundamentally changed how I think about photography. It is hard to get excited about vintage filters on Instagram after shooting a drone selfie (call it a "dronie") or panning hillside Napa vineyards at sunrise. A drone allows you to move a camera in ways that might otherwise require a helicopter and a Michael Bay budget. In the harsh desert landscape of Joshua Tree, we climbed atop towering boulders and then had the drone shoot a video that panned up from the ground. The footage made it look as though we had scaled a Martian mountain—and it put ordinary vacation movies to shame. Eat your heart out, National Geographic."