I went on an adventure with my girlfriend and my dad to the Ross Creek Cedars in Montana. It was a really cool place to fly, but particularly dangerous with the density of trees!

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Virtual Reality viewer

Bull Lake (left), Snowshoe Peak

We’re on a briiiidge

Debris in the river

Stacked rocks

Thick trees

Here my dad is showing Megan a plant he identified as wild ginger. Megan just got a gardening job, and I was really happy that this moment happened and really just happy that the three of us could be together in general. There are very few primary growth forests left and this was such a cool spot to check out, I highly recommend it. Bring your loved ones!

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For me as a drone pilot this was a perfect spot to go out and fly. National Forests are the best place to fly from a legal point of view, and forests are ripe with photo opportunities. Very tall trees are particularly challenging to capture because they are so massive, and the gimbal on my drone cannot tilt high enough to see the tops of the trees unless I am far away. I was able to fly directly up and check my altitude and determine the real height of the trees. They were all 100 feet tall or more. Another tricky component to photographing/filming the forest is to consider the light coming through the trees and how that affects the “auto” settings in video mode. You must lock in your camera settings, or else when you are traveling in and out of shadows the footage will look like this (not ideal):

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At any rate, May 26, 2021 will be the 1-year anniversary of my first flight! I fly very often and I learn something almost every time. I have some very interesting things coming up in my professional drone life! I have begun to expirement with a process called photogrammetry - which is absolutely getting its own blog post soon. I can create 3D models and Digital Terrain Maps with my drone! Stay tuned for a preview of that!