Drone Photos

There was a point somewhere along the way when I stopped thinking of a drone as a flying camera.

It became another pair of eyes.

And those eyes could go somewhere mine couldn't.

Up.

That sounds ridiculously simple until you've actually done it.

You stand in a place you've seen hundreds of times.

A road.

A beach.

Cannock Chase.

A campsite.

A field near home.

Vanilla parked somewhere beautiful.

Then the drone lifts.

Ten metres.

Thirty.

Fifty.

And suddenly the place you thought you knew has been completely rearranged.

143 photographs, one video and years of looking up

My Flickr Drones album has slowly turned into something much bigger than a folder of aerial photographs.

It's become an aerial diary.

There are now photographs stretching across years of flying: Staffordshire, Milford, Exmouth, Cannock Chase, Shugborough, events, road trips, Scotland and a whole collection of those moments when I've stood somewhere and thought:

I wonder what that looks like from up there?

Usually the answer is:

Bloody brilliant.

Before Scotland, before Vanilla, there was Milford

One of the photographs I particularly enjoy looking back at is Milford in autumn 2017.

This is home territory.

Somewhere familiar.

Somewhere I'd driven through, walked around and looked at countless times.

Except the drone changed it.

That's one of the things that first hooked me.

The drone wasn't necessarily taking me somewhere new.

It was making somewhere old look new again.

And I've basically been chasing that feeling ever since.

The drones changed. The obsession didn't.

I've owned enough little aircraft now to form what is basically my own miniature air force.

Twitch. DJI Spark.

Nemesis. DJI Mavic 2 Pro.

Zoom. DJI Mini 4 Pro.

And now Sneaker, my tiny DJI Neo 2.

Different generations.

Different cameras.

Different capabilities.

Same bloke underneath them staring at a controller with a ridiculous grin on his face.

The technology has changed beyond recognition.

Earlier drones made aerial photography accessible.

Modern drones make it almost absurd.

I can carry something tiny in Vanilla, unfold it, launch it and within a couple of minutes I'm looking at a live view from somewhere that once would have required a helicopter.

Stop and think about that for a moment.

It's bonkers.

And I absolutely love it.

It isn't about flying high

One of the biggest things I've learned is that the best drone photograph isn't necessarily taken from the greatest altitude.

When you first get a drone there is an almost irresistible temptation to do one thing.

UP.

Higher.

Higher.

Higher.

Congratulations.

You've recreated Google Maps.

Eventually you realise the interesting photographs often happen much lower down.

Twenty metres.

Thirty metres.

Just above the trees.

That's where walls become leading lines.

That's where roads start curling through a frame.

That's where buildings become geometry.

That's where shadows become shapes.

Shugborough from above

Shugborough is another perfect example.

From ground level you experience architecture as something in front of you.

From the drone, you start to see the architecture in context.

The building.

The grounds.

The symmetry.

The way everything has been positioned in the landscape.

That's exactly the sort of thing a drone does brilliantly.

It doesn't simply photograph the subject.

It explains where the subject lives.

Cannock Chase from my other point of view

Cannock Chase is somewhere I know extremely well.

I've driven through it.

Walked it.

Photographed it.

Ridden Torque through it.

Stopped there more times than I could count.

But send a drone above it and another Cannock Chase appears.

Heather becomes colour.

Tracks become lines.

Trees become texture.

The geography suddenly makes sense.

That's one of the things I love most about aerial photography.

The drone doesn't simply record a landscape.

It reveals its structure.

Then Vanilla arrived

This is probably where NIX SKY and NIX ROAD properly collided.

Once Vanilla became part of my travelling life, drone photography became part of the journey as well.

I'd arrive somewhere beautiful and almost instinctively start looking at the sky.

Not necessarily because I wanted another photograph of Vanilla.

I wanted a photograph of where Vanilla had taken me.

There's a huge difference.

A campervan underneath a mountain.

A tiny grey rectangle beside a loch.

A road disappearing into nowhere.

A campsite sitting in the middle of a vast Highland landscape.

Those photographs tell the story of travelling better than another shot through the windscreen ever could.

Kyle of Tongue

Scotland • September 2025

This one is probably the photograph that explains the whole thing.

Kyle of Tongue.

Sutherland.

Evening.

Zoom, my DJI Mini 4 Pro, in the air.

Water stretching through the landscape.

Mountains beyond.

The road disappearing into the Highlands.

And Vanilla somewhere down there looking very, very small.

From ground level it was already spectacular.

From the drone it became something else entirely.

The campsite suddenly looked tiny against the landscape.

Vanilla became a speck.

And the whole photograph captured something I've repeatedly felt while travelling around Scotland.

The little grey van and the enormous world

I love that relationship.

Vanilla gives me independence on the ground.

The drone gives me freedom above it.

Together they've completely changed the way I travel.

I'll find somewhere.

Park.

Make a coffee.

Look around.

Check the wind.

And eventually the little thought arrives.

This could be interesting from the air.

Controller out.

Props unfolded.

Satellite lock.

Home point updated.

Take-off.

Bzzzzzzzz.

Then the screen in my hands suddenly shows me the world from somewhere I've never physically stood.

That little moment hasn't got old.

Finding geometry in ordinary things

Drone photography has also taught me something about photography generally.

Ordinary things aren't necessarily ordinary from above.

Fields.

Farm buildings.

Roads.

Car parks.

Rows of campervans.

Trees.

Coastlines.

Crowds.

Height removes clutter and replaces it with geometry.

Suddenly I'm photographing lines, patterns, shadows, colour, scale and repetition instead of simply photographing objects.

That's why an aerial photograph can work even when the subject sounds fantastically dull.

Here's a field.

Excellent.

Put the camera fifty metres above it with a low winter sun throwing shadows across the hedges and suddenly it becomes something completely different.

Events from above

Then there are events.

From ground level they're noise, people, vans, flags, music, dogs, awnings and glorious confusion.

From the air?

Order.

Rows.

Patterns.

Colour.

Scale.

You suddenly see the whole thing breathing.

Drone photography can show the size of an experience in a way ordinary photography sometimes struggles to communicate.

I don't want perfect

This is probably the most NIX part of the whole thing.

I'm not chasing laboratory-perfect photographs.

Obviously I want them sharp.

I care about composition.

I care about colour.

I edit.

I fiddle.

I will absolutely move a slider backwards and forwards twelve times before deciding it was probably right to begin with.

But technical perfection isn't why I take photographs.

I want pictures that make me remember standing there.

The temperature.

The light.

The journey.

Where Vanilla was parked.

What happened that day.

Who I was with.

What music was playing.

Where I went afterwards.

That's the difference between a technically good photograph and my photograph.

My three rules of drone photography

01 / Don't just go up

Move.

Try lower angles.

Fly sideways.

Look behind you.

Rotate the aircraft.

Sometimes the photograph is ninety degrees away from the thing you originally launched to photograph.

02 / Light beats equipment

Give me gorgeous evening light and an older drone over the latest flying camera underneath horrible midday light.

Sunrise and sunset turn landscapes into theatre.

Long shadows are free special effects.

03 / Show scale

Put something recognisable in the landscape.

A road.

A building.

A person.

A campervan.

Preferably a campervan called Vanilla.

Give the viewer something whose size they understand and suddenly they understand how enormous everything else is.

Then there's the technology

This is where things get dangerously NIX.

Because yes, I love photography.

But I also absolutely love the machinery.

GPS.

Obstacle sensing.

Gimbals.

Batteries.

Transmission systems.

Automated return-to-home.

Camera sensors.

RAW files.

Flight telemetry.

Tiny brushless motors screaming away somewhere above my head.

Modern drones are astonishing little machines.

The Mini 4 Pro in particular hits a ridiculous sweet spot.

Small enough that taking it isn't an expedition.

Good enough that leaving it behind feels silly.

And that's important.

Because the greatest camera in the world is completely useless when it's sitting in a cupboard at home.

Zoom goes in Vanilla.

Therefore Zoom gets photographs.

Simple.

The best drone is the one I'm actually flying

That's also why the tiny drones interest me.

Sneaker represents another direction entirely.

Less ceremony.

Less:

Today I am conducting an aerial photographic operation.

More:

That looks interesting.

Launch.

Shoot.

Land.

Done.

I like that.

Photography becomes part of the moment rather than its own expedition.

Photography made me travel. Travel made me photograph.

There's a circular thing happening here.

I travel because I want to see things.

I photograph them because I travelled there.

Then looking at the photographs makes me want to travel again.

Very convenient system.

Not remotely good for diesel consumption.

Drone photography intensified all of it.

Now when I'm planning somewhere, I'm not only thinking about what there is to see.

I'm unconsciously imagining the aerial photograph.

Coastlines.

Mountains.

Historic buildings.

Forests.

Roads.

Campsites.

Beaches.

Architecture.

Water.

Give me an interesting landscape and a charged flight battery and I'm very happy indeed.

The album isn't really about drones

And that's the funny part.

I called the Flickr album Drones.

But looking through all those photographs, the drones aren't really the subject.

The album is about places.

Where I've been.

What I've seen.

How my photography changed.

How the technology changed.

How my travelling changed.

Milford.

Exmouth.

Shugborough.

Cannock Chase.

Events.

Staffordshire.

Vanilla.

Scotland.

Kyle of Tongue.

Years condensed into rectangles of light.

The aircraft are simply what allowed me to see those places differently.

Why I still fly

Because every now and again it happens.

The light is right.

The wind behaves.

The drone climbs.

The landscape appears on the screen.

And I see something I genuinely couldn't see five seconds earlier.

That's it.

That's the addiction.

Not flying.

Not specifications.

Not megapixels.

Discovery.

Standing on the ground while simultaneously looking down from the sky.

Even after all these years, that still feels bordering on magic.

And there are an awful lot of places I haven't flown yet.