How to take better photographs with your drone

With more and more people flying drones and posting top-down shots of a waves breaking in the ocean, the novelty of a drone photograph has worn off. Why? Becuase people forgot that photography rules still apply to drones.

Drone cameras are improving hugely, with drones like the DJI Mavic 2 Pro coming with a 1” sensor and 20 megapixel camera, the image quality you will get is getting closer and closer to what your mirrorless/dslr can shoot. But as good as cameras get, you still need to learn some photography techniques to take better images.

Here are 4 tips to start taking better photographs with your drone with example shots taken with my DJI Mavic Air.

Composition

The rule of thirds, leading lines, symmetry, framing, and other composition rules in photography still apply in drone photography. A simple google search will show you how to use composition in photography. See how you can make use of one of those composition rules to create a more compelling image .

Look for shadows

During the morning and the evening when the sun is low on the horizon, the light casts big shadows of taller objects on the ground. See how you can use those shadows to create an interesting image.

Shoot in manual

Over exposed (images that are too bright) drone photographs are all over the internet . Shooting in manual will let you manually adjust the brightness of the image and enable you to control how bright or dark the image is. If I had shot the below image in ‘auto’, the camera would have tried to make the dark water below the bridge bright enough to see and made the image way to bright. By manually lowering the exposure, I was able to only capture the parts the sun light was touching.

Look for contrast

Look at contrasting textures. Grass has a different texture to water. Trees have a different texture to an open field . See how you can use contrast in texture to create an interesting image. Other contrasting things to look for is contrasting color, contrasting light , and contrasting shapes.