Pennington County Storm

After a long day in Badlands NP my daughter and I decided to try to capture lightning. We drove north of Wall after dinner and watched the sky. It was fun to watch and quite an experiment in camera settings. We finally settled on a shutter speed of about 1-2 seconds to balance the brightness of lightning with the dark sky.

A quiet little park

I'm playing with my daughter's drone and found a small county park to fly in. The trees and water added just enough tension to an already tense experience learning to control the aircraft. Drones are really about flying to an area to photograph or recording en route to an location. At this point photography is second priority, maybe that will change with more experience.

Pioneer Cemetery

A nearby pioneer cemetery was a perfect location to learn drone video techniques. This is a truly team effort in film-making: Angela-equipment manager, Elizabeth-director and film editor, Sandi-managing editor, Dale-cinematographer. Lots to learn but have not mowed any grass or trimmed trees with it yet. Just starting to get out of "auto" in photo/video mode.

Drone Trial

My daughter has let me borrow her drone for a couple weeks. After the initial thought, "I'm too old a dog for new tricks.",  I decided to give it a try. As with all camera gear it is super simple to get a picture but a good photo takes some practice. After an emergency call to her to find out how to turn it on I was ready to go.  My current passion is video so I am learning those features first with some still images thrown in along the way.

Technical: DJI Platinum Mavic Pro, out of the box settings. Edit in FCPX 

Cambria (American) Tradition

Cambria is a tiny unincorporated town in southern Minnesota that has been inhabited for about 8000 years. It has a tradition of celebrating on July 3rd with a town parade, it circles the block twice, and a better than expected fireworks display. If you can't get out tonight this is will give you a chance to see some 4th fireworks this year.

For those who want more:

Technical: Music from iTunes. Produced using the slide show feature on LightRoom.