It’s #TravelTuesday and I, Dave Williams, write this week from the UK where we’re just around the corner from The Photography Show. There are a lot of other things happening in the UK right now, too. Things feel different. The status quo has changed and we’re coming to terms with what’s happened with the loss of our Queen. As this is a photography blog I won’t go into the subject here aside from to express my thanks to Scott and many other American friends who have send messages of condolence, and to say God Save The King.
I was recently in Iceland shooting landscapes as part of a project with Russell Brown for Adobe Max and I had a lot of opportunities whilst I was there to go off-piste and fly my drone in search of patterns and colours. If you’ve seen my KelbyOne class on drone photography you’ll be aware that one of the main points I make with regard to it is that we must remember it’s still a camera – it’s simply a camera displaced from us. Shooting drone images can cause people to fall into the trap of forgetting about applying compositional techniques and other photographic principles. When it comes to shooting straight down, or topdown images, this becomes all the more important. With this style of photo we have no sky to rely on, so we have to construct the scene ourselves with patterns, shapes, colours, textures, and anything else we see down there. Here are some of my topdown shots from Iceland that I hope inspire you to shoot your own.
My message for today is two-fold: –
Firstly, there is beauty in nature. So much of it. We should appreciate and respect that beauty alongside the imperfections.
Secondly, we can find and show that beauty with our photography. With these topdown drone photos it’s a case of finding engaging or unusual patterns, shapes and colours as a foundation to our scene and with a normal, land-based camera we can employ much the same techniques. Let’s look for the beauty and show the good things we see.
Much love
Dave
