How to Take Better Landscape Photos When Flying Your Drone

If you enjoy shooting landscapes, a drone can offer a vastly different perspective that can open up a wealth of new possibilities even in places you've already shot before. This great tutorial will give you some helpful tips for getting the most out of yours. 

Coming to you from Andrew Marr, this helpful video shows you both his process in shooting landscape images with his drone as well as some insightful and practical tips. Of the tips, one I can't recommend highly enough is always shooting in bracket mode (I typically shoot five-shot brackets). Most of the time, the drone's sensor simply doesn't have enough dynamic range to capture the entire scene, particularly when you're including brighter portions of the sky in the shot. Shooting in AEB mode will leave you extra dynamic range you can blend into a final shot in post. When you're shooting in this mode, you'll come home with a bunch of bursts of three or five shots, so be sure to take advantage of the auto-stacking feature in Lightroom; this will make it easier to browse and select truly different shots as opposed to having to wade through lots of various exposures of the same image. Check out the video above for more. 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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5 Comments

Not bad, but after seeing hundreds of drone photography tutorials on YouTube, how much more one can one learn, really...? And this one sounds more like a soap opera. It was done with good intentions though...

I have been wanting to buy a drone for architectural, landscape and travel photography, but never seem to come to a conclusion about which drone to buy. Would the DJI Mavic do the job?

Rick McEvoy - https://rickmcevoyphotography.com/

I personally dislike drones and the use of them as they are disruptive in most environments. National Parks have banned them thank god...

I'm just glad not everyone thinks the way you do. Never pushing boundaries, never trying something different and unique, never stepping out of your comfort zone. Drones have opened a whole new world to capturing everything under the sun. Just like he said in this video, it allows you to go places that originally you never could have gone before. "Disruptive", lol. Never once have I had my drone out and someone thought it was Disruptive. Only thing I have ever heard was "How cool!" and "Can you really see a live view on your phone!?"....I've even spoke with Chiefs of Police who thought it would be awesome if they had some, and local schools who things it would be great for sporting events, etc...So thank god not everyone thinks the way you do.

as someone considering investing in a mavic pro or similar drone for photography/video but never flown one before, am I best to buy a really cheap model and 'learn to fly' first or are the cheapies so different that it would be learning all over again when it comes to the Mavic pro etc? Any advice appreciated.