Navajo Dam Lake is probably my favorite area of New Mexico. This is my third trip to the area just this year and fifth overall. I have seen it in all seasons now. This trip was quite different however. I still went up to photograph and fly over a rural land real estate property. However, there was extra time and Jessica’s parents were on their way back from Monument Valley so we all met up at Abe’s Motel & Fly Shop (home of the best French toast in New Mexico) then rented a boat at the marina right on Navajo Dam Lake. I brought my drone with me out onto the boat and quickly realized flying from the actual moving object you are recording is quite a challenge! I would let the drone hover so I can frame the shot, but the boat kept moving, so you see me in the above video often looking at the control screen to make sure I am keeping the boat in frame and at the same time actually try and make the video a bit cinematic, even though this was just a fun video for family memories.
Day two of flying for B&D Industries Inc of Albuquerque New Mexico had me flying my drone at their headquarters. Day one was flying around a crane as it hoisted up AC units. Despite not having to worry about a moving subject in the form of a very tall crane, flying over still buildings and vehicles was still a big challenge this time due to extreme wind. Look at the trees blowing in the above drone video. Flying low and slow was almost impossible, so I looked to have more movement created by the gimbal and flying faster and shorter. Thanks to Nate for being a visual observer and having good ideas for clips.
This was my most dynamic drone flight yet, following a crane as it hoisted AC units on top of apartment buildings. Most of my drone flights have been of still subjects, like luxury homes or rural land or bridges. Having a moving, not exactly predictable, subject was a welcome challenge. This is also my most advanced editing of a drone video. Watching it you may think I had two or three drones in the air at once as I cut between seemingly different views of an AC unit being raised to the roof. Actually, since the action of lifting an AC unit on to the roof is very uniform in crane and person movement, the cuts are of different units going up, but it looks like it is all from a single piece of action shot from multiple angles. I did not realize this was happening while flying, so it was a cool discovery in the editing process that I could make it seem like a “multi-cam,” or multi-drone as it were, shoot.
Almost every real estate photo and drone shoot in New Mexico has its challenges. And then sometimes a property has pretty much every challenge possible! That is the case with this home in Placitas, New Mexico being listed by Mark & Susan Ryerson. The first challenge as you can see from the above photo is that the front of the house is largely blocked by trees and it is up on a hill, so getting a direct front view shot was not really possible, not even with the drone. The interior had unique architecture, but somewhat small rooms with large furniture in them. Even using a 15mm lens I had to really search for angles I liked for the living room in particular. Then flying the drone itself, I never had a signal issue between the remote control and the drone until this flight, likely due to the massive power lines right behind the house, which also prevented flying from that direction. Then there was wind from being so close to the mountains and the aforementioned trees all around the house! Overall, this was one of the most challenging real estate shoots and drone flights I have ever done in the Albuquerque area. Thank you to Mark & Susan for their great help as they always provide on this shoot and flight!
While out on a rural land real estate assignment in northwest New Mexico near the town of Aztec, the client wanted to include some drone video of the nearby Animas River. I have flown over the Animas River before in an area north of Durango, Colorado even catching some people jumping high off the cliffs into the river! The river there had a beautiful matte emerald green color to it. In this area of New Mexico, the river was an unattractive brown, but nonetheless the surrounding mesas still made for a stunning scene. This drone video shows a small, hidden area of New Mexico True.
The designers of the FedEx building in Albuquerque, New Mexico want FedEx to choose them to build more FedEx facilities around the country. So they hired me to make a 4K drone video of the exterior of the facility trying to show it off. I was expecting something with a bit more flair to it, as this kind of, no offense, looked just like what I thought a FedEx shipping warehouse would look like, i.e. a large rectangle. Still, I used my drone piloting skills to make it as cinematic as possible showing off both the facility and the surrounding desert and mountains. I also had my Nikon with me to get some interior commercial photos. I found I liked photographing forklifts!
Out in rural Rio Rancho on assignment for a new local real estate client, Mike Mellos, flying my DJI Mavic Pro drone over a large rural land property with great views of the Sandia Mountains. Mike wanted me to show the large road frontage of the property as well as the sloping of the land beyond the property to indicate nothing could be built that will block those wonderful mountain views.
