Autumn is a great time of year for aerial photography. The change of color can be breathtaking in Colorado and the Fall foliage makes way for some excellent pictures. I usually start by powering up the batteries in my drone early in the day and get everything prepared for an early evening photo shoot. This year I headed out to Wallace Park, it's near the interchange of I-225 and I-25 and has a backdrop of the Denver Technology Center and the Colorado Mountains.
![Denver Technology Center Denver Technology Center](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPoZzzIn1bhsNd1QYfksoz6SkOufvCXSQBTw5Ays7xnm-7QPOKAPQsTrGBX38hwE5LWzg_IUSrL7JWdhuZzjgxP8ZTwoHFSLz0yZVvyRqX_u7WwC0nzKoRfkHIzYCL22fGuQiuDuf9YciusKDGq5gdoxwouGodwEPapNWJxCE805ulklpV4dnPkQ/w400-h224/Wallace%20Park1.jpg) |
Wallace Park at Denver Technology Center |
I decided to do something a little different. I wanted to get a picture of a kite flying over a park with the Fall foliage, the high rise buildings and the mountains, but hanging my 360 camera under a kite seemed time consuming and problematic. The solution was to use the drone to carry the camera and add the kite in post, but getting a image of the string of the kite would be a challenge.
![Drone Flying above Wallace Park Drone Flying at 150 feet above Wallace Park](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCKvcKgieg5qtDgxVT7WpKcj1w_9VE61Ceqbj53W1Rl7zNpMpeCi8Pd68K0RcWRap5YZXLI0VnsMqIwC4lSs5l7g5LstOnF6TbpZj8h2RjRPYlzt8EKeIZ-JRTIVlGqX0B1UEdecfSyTCJWBMslO0EnNtBg2chkIHChAtWxOhvfW5GrPUr0kTxKA/w400-h200/Kite1%20with%20Drone.jpg) |
Drone Flying at 150 feet above Wallace Park |
As usual the local Home Depot had a nice solution, but as often is the case, this kind of thing can be a bit trial and error. It was easy enough to find a bright yellow string and a small pully and attach the pulley to the bottom of the drone. Then I fed the yellow string through the pulley and attached the old bullet time string to my old Insta 360 camera and knot them together.
![360 Image of kite above Wallace Park 360 Image of kite above Wallace Park](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSNzSTxbbH-I_0Phb9GPQoPGBv2X4jETQ9Vn3CQwyp2aq2F5tq5FZmFeE2SDV2hyFxNlllZvKL9UnccVO6qa0AK6Elsqib0dDPgWLQwATz5sJqzfqA4YXctGWyHpvYOgz6vv7XY8KJlDgKr81RTTnlvSxIDpTW2NlTCmdx5jZOv98aLq6bi3m0aA/w400-h314/Kite1.jpg) |
Go fly a kite |
I enjoy flying the drone, but in this case I had to manage a lot of different things. I put the Insta 360 in photo interval mode and launched the drone. It was set to take pictures every 60 seconds. The camera was spinning wildly so I wasn't sure how well the images would turn out. Sometimes you just have to wait until you back in your studio to see the results and in this case a lot of the images were blurry.
![Insta 360 little world mode of drone on a string Insta 360 little world mode of drone on a string](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtYJIjl-gjgFnShi19BIDta4_rjnlEQDL_PdXsI_llf7V-1YnXzYyg5SFLDm_fsHZ_7thA_xkguPYnQyEtnm-vuAwPL2ghGQuDABZwQh-TFjP8YhO3kSTgMOvJskdT3NpvlbDQUIcFp9-si1KWTKdsEtmOysejvVKHwFRRz2gyDprKGujxp2encg/w400-h200/Kite2%20with%20Drone.jpg) |
Little world mode of drone on a string |
Fortunately I was able to use some of the pictures and the yellow/orange string looked perfect. The Insta 360 software has some cool image modes and I used a fisheye effect on the first image and little world on the second one. I then touched up the images in Adobe Lightroom and used Photoshop to remove the drone and add the kite.
![World on a string World on a string by April Alsup](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_CvcvpEC8GGoe7LNcQOom2j2-G5gYtDB08GP_6109Sahd5XG4eFw6TyIRMn9R2tfWoRNNqQ04F_DocGFMLBozcH69SPXHffJU_6g7o3dzIVFP0xs21PNaPeS0_Gj-NfUHZq_CjDF3HxAZINanSv1mruP1Fdp-AMyeacbP1ua1eX5kwITpLclJxw/w394-h400/Kite2.jpg) |
World on a string |
All in all, I'm happy with the results. The first image was a panoramic image I took using the drone's Hasselblad 1" sensor on an old Mavic 2 pro. The other two were from the Insta 360 and I did some post framing and color correction on them, but it was a fun day for aerial photo content creation before all the leaves drop and Winter time comes in Colorado.