Drone Mind

The following is a transcript of an interview with The Dronalist, a drone photographer in New York City.

His Instagram and Youtube are linked.

DRONEMIND: Can you start by explaining what exactly it is that you do?

The Dronalist: So, I’m a drone pilot, and I specifically shoot mostly urban areas. Usually for a number of outlets, including YouTube and social media like YouTube and TikTok, and things like that, but also primarily do marketing material or promotional material for
new buildings or high rises that the developers would like to get some promotional
material about, or some cool marketing or campaign material. And so often I’ll get hired
by different groups that will either be the building representatives, like the building
architects themselves or possibly a marketing group who we’ll work with to figure out a
shot list and then from there I’ll go out and get the proper requirements to get the shots.
And so larger buildings my wheelhouse in urban areas.

DRONEMIND: And you mostly so you mostly work with developers?

The Dronalist: That’s right. A lot of times it’s the developers directly themselves. Or
sometimes a developer might hire a media or marketing company and they might have
their own set of editors or people who will have a specific vision of what they want to do
with the end product. And so it depends, but a lot of times it’s either directly through
developers or with some kind of third party marketing team or firm that they’ve hired
that I’ll work with.

DRONEMIND: And how did you get into this business?

The Dronalist: It’s funny, I didn’t have a clear goal to get started. It happened a little bit
on accident. My wife was at the time an influencer on Instagram and so she wanted to
have some drone footage. It was back when that was sort of novel. And so, she asked
if I would get a drone and learn how to use it and maybe take some photos or videos of
her to post. And so, I thought, “Oh yeah, that sounds really cool to me. I’ll is an excuse
sort of to buy a drone.” I never really ended up posting or filming anything for her
actually, but I started falling in love with flying drones. Once I got the first one, I was
hooked. That was 2018, I think, so it’s been a number of years. So it happened like that
and then I would start posting on Instagram at the time and I would get a little traction.
People would reach out and say, “Hey, cool. I like your stuff.. do you want to shoot my
building or whatever.” And so it slowly developed from there until after I got some
inquiries, I got my pilot’s license. It’s called a part 107 drone pilot’s license, and that is a
requirement if you would like to make money using drones. It’s a requirement to be able
to commercialize your drone hobby. And it also allows you to get permission to get
access to a bunch of places from the FAA. And so, after I was getting some inquiries
about jobs, I started to look into getting my pilot’s license, and it took me a little while. It’s not easy, but it’s not as hard as getting an airplane helicopter license, for example.
There’s no pilot time, it’s all written. It’s all in a written multiple choice sort of format. But
you do have to learn how to do a lot of the same things pilots learn, like how to read
navigation maps and figure out based on the longitude and latitude and how close you
are to an airport and what direction airplanes are coming, where you’re allowed to fly
and how high and all. You have to learn all these complicated things that usually don’t
ever apply to me because I just don’t fly around airports or crowded airspace or
anything like that. But it’s it was cool to learn and to get a license to allow me to
monetize. And then from there, I just would have a basic email set up and people would
find me on like Instagram or Tik Tok or YouTube and email me and we would
correspond back and forth.

DRONEMIND: Yeah. So, I searched it on google and I think it’s not legal to commercially
use drones in New York City. But is it only if you don’t have like the pilot’s license?

The Dronalist: There’s a couple things. So, basically with a pilot’s license, you’re able to
get FAA approval, but then New York City also has their own approval process.
Thankfully, they’ve adopted a standard. I think it went into effect last year where they
have an online form you can fill out to get permission. So, that helps a lot because
before it was sort of ambiguous and a little bit clunky how to get permission in New
York City, but now they made it an official website with an official form you fill out.
As long as you have a license and as long as you have drone insurance and a few other
requirements, then you can apply for access for any area and you may or may not get
denied. A lot of times if you get denied it’s because there’s a convention at the UN
building and they don’t want anyone around that week or something like that. But you
can get approval for some other time. Other cities don’t have such a formal process. So
it’s a little bit of a gray area in droning. I think it’s a new activity, so it’ll be probably
sometime before everyone gets on board. But they’ve streamlined the process a lot and
the FAA has laxed their rules quite a bit from when I started. For example, you can get
permits now to fly over people, to fly at night, all that kind of stuff, whereas it was a lot
harder to do before when I first started. And so, I had to limit kind of the flight patterns I
could do just try to, you know, not get in trouble and that kind of thing.

DRONEMIND: Yeah. And you said you started in like 2018. Did covid at all affect it?

The Dronalist: Yeah, that’s a good question. I was randomly in Mexico for a few months
during COVID, and then it hit so we came back to the United States because they kicked
everyone out of Mexico, and so I ended up in in Phoenix randomly. It was just a close
place where we could be around our parents in case anyone got sick. But I wasn’t in
New York until June or July of 2021, so I missed the whole first part of 2021. When I came back it was still empty though. It was pretty crazy. It was right after Black Lives
Matter too or kind of in middle end of that phase, and so it was interesting. It was super
empty, but then there’d be a bunch of crowds for protests. It was a different, a weird sort
of interesting mix where New York will be empty streets sometimes and then a bunch of
people. So it was a weird time, but like everyone else I just thought, well, I’ll see how this
is going how this will shape up in the future and just sort of took a break until there was
more to do. But I’ll clarify, this is this is a part-time job for me. So, I still had my full-time
job, so it wasn’t like my income was cut off or anything. I had the luxury of being able to
sort of push pause. Thankfully

DRONEMIND: Are there a lot of other people who do what you do? So, is there a lot of
competition?

The Dronalist: Yes, there’s a decent amount of people, a few people that have
companies in New York that I reference quite a bit. And it’s not that I would call them
competition because a lot of times, there’s just a lot of there’s a lot of different work and
we all specialize in different things. Some people are really good at doing narrations and
stories and they want to film a certain character for instance that is in a car and then
they build almost a film a scene like that–for Netflix or something. And that’s not my
wheelhouse, so I just sort of refer those jobs to other people. What I am good at, there’s
not a ton of people that do it, and so it’s been enough work and more often than not, I
need to pass on jobs just because of time constraints.

DRONEMIND: And is do you have a team or a partner or is it just you?

The Dronalist: It’s just me, so yeah, currently because it’s not my primary source of
income, I’m not I’m not really able to hire other people. It might be worth it someday.
But I really get a joy out of just the hobby of it, just doing it. So I try to keep it like less of
a job and more of like a fun activity that I can get paid for and that pays for the drones
and all the gear I have to buy. So overall, yeah, I try to just think of it more as a fun job
and that way I don’t make it too big and try to like scale it or say for example that I want
to make X-amount of videos on YouTube every week or really build my channel. It’s
more of just like an organic thing where I can let it happen and then I can take a break
when I need to and that way I don’t have to worry about like paying my employees or
something if I want to like take a break. My wife and I just had my first child a year ago
and I can stay home for the few couple of months and so it’s been it’s been good just to
be solo for now, we’ll see in the future if I want to take this to the next level, but for now
it’s a nice solo venture.

DRONEMIND: Yeah. Well, congratulations.

The Dronalist: Oh, thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you.

DRONEMIND: what type of drones do you usually use?

The Dronalist: So, I am finding a like prosumer, I guess, or consumer prosumer style
drones. So, they’re mostly DJI drones, and those are the Mavic series. So, whatever, like
the latest sort of Mavic foldable DJI drone is one of my go-to drones. And then the
second brand, which you may or may not have heard of, is called Autel. And they make a
drone called the Evo, and it’s similar. It’s kind of like a foldable drone, very similar to a
Mavic. It’s like their version of a Mavic. I switch in and out depending on the lighting
situations. Depending on the lighting, I’ll choose a drone because of the color science
that the camera uses, and I find that it will give suboptimal results depending on the
cloud coverage, how overcast the day is and things like that. So, I’ll switch back and
forth on those two drones depending on the weather. Those are my two go-to: Autel
Evo and the Mavic DJI. And then I just started getting into FPV droning which is a little
bit different than the traditional cinematic droning—I’m not sure if that’s what it’s
referred to as, but FPV is where you wear goggles and then you fly usually a smaller
drone, and you maneuver more like a bird, you glide as opposed to hover if that makes
sense where a traditional drone will just sort of hover. And that’s been a lot of fun. It’s a
different style for sure. Your horizon’s not locked. It’s not like a cinematic shot. It’s more
like you’re going on a wing aircraft. But, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s more for just like I said,
get getting new experience and having fun with the hobby and learning new things. But,
yeah. So, the FPV drone I use is the DJI Avata.

DRONEMIND: So, do you now mostly use FPV drones or are you still mostly using the I
guess the cinema drones.

The Dronalist: Yeah, we’ll call them cinema drone. I’m not sure what they’re called to be
honest, but it’s primarily still the cinema drones. Those are the bread and butter for the
majority of what I do as far as getting marketing material. It’s usually very slow
cinematic shots.

DRONEMIND: Yeah.

The Dronalist: The other source of income is from selling on Pond5 or Shutterstock. I
think they’re the same company now, but basically, it’s a stock footage site, so, I’ll
upload a bunch of footage there. And so again, mostly people want cinematic, slow
moving establishing shots that they use as B-roll for commercials or for Netflix shows

or for like documentaries or something like that. But the FPV is really cool if you want to
feel like you’re a bird flying through the air. So, I have sold some of that but not as much.
I don’t have as much footage. Where people want to see that kind of stuff where they’re
flying through and going in and out of traffic and things like that is for the B-roll. I don’t
know if you’re familiar with that term, B-roll.

DRONEMIND: No

The Dronalist: It’s basically whenever there’s a TV show and they want to show that
you’re at Disneyland. So they’ll show a far away shot of Disneyland and then they’ll show
people or if it’s a sitcom, they’ll show a building and then they’ll show people in the
building and then you’re like, “Oh yeah, I’m in the building.” Usually, it’s set in New York
City so just an establishing shot of New York City to make to use of in a B-roll for a
documentary, let’s say, or whatever is typical. But most of the time they want the slow
very standard cinematic shots.

DRONEMIND: Yeah.

The Dronalist: But FPV is really fun. I’m hoping more people want it. I’m thinking about
getting into marketing to some boutique hotels to do some flythroughs. I’ve never done
that, FPV allows you to fly indoors which is new to me and so I might start doing that
just for the fun of it. It’s a challenge for sure, to get good at it. It’s a lot harder to get
good at it. There’s actually a whole league of FPV pilots. Have you seen those guys?
They’re racing those drones and they’re so good. But they practice a bunch. I had to
practice on a simulator with a remote control plugged into my computer for about 20
hours before I even tried to fly it. And even after that, I crashed pretty much all the time.
I just like took it out in the grass and crashed. And it was fine because they’re built to
crash. But, yeah, I just did that for a while. It took me forever, man, but yeah, it’s a fun
thing if you ever want to try it.

DRONEMIND: All right, is drone cinematography a growing industry?

The Dronalist: I think so, I think just because the gear that you can get now is so good,
you can get some really cool shots. I’ve seen a great variety of shots and locations that
I had never seen before. When I first started there were not as many types of shots, or
the variety was much smaller and now I feel it’s grown so much and there are people
that do really cool things, very specific interesting things that are different. They’re all
using drones but in their own way where I feel like that’s a really cool development that
continues to flourish as the hobby grows. I don’t know about the money making that
side of it, it’s hard to say because I know there’s a lot of AI, and companies who can
make drone like B-roll or drone-like footage by just putting it in a prompt. So, I don’t
know if in the future people will even buy stock footage from me or if it’ll just be in a
prompt and they’ll generate it. Which is fine. So I’m not sure if like it’s a growing thing for money, but I do know it’s a growing thing for the for hobbyists and the different
things you can do is certainly expanding.

DRONEMIND: You mentioned AI. Is AI taking over a lot of the work that you would
usually do.

The Dronalist: Not yet. So far, I haven’t seen too much of a dip in sales for the stock
footage that I sell, which was what I think will be the first thing that AI takes away. Or
maybe there’ll be YouTube videos that AI does, but I haven’t seen that yet. I don’t think
it’s cheap enough yet. I think to make a full-length long-form drone video with AI still
probably takes a lot of tokens and probably costs a decent amount. So, I think people
still feel like it’s cheaper to just fly your drone. But in the future if it gets cheaper, I
imagine you can just type in a prompt like exactly what you want. I could see people like
studios and companies doing that as opposed to buying my stock footage. But I’m sure
I’ll find some other thing that I can do creatively.

DRONEMIND: Do you worry about the future of drones, like specifically in warfare?

The Dronalist: Yeah, definitely, man. Especially after the Ukraine and Russian conflict
that we’ve seen on display here lately. It’s terrifying what drones can do. They’re using
similar drones to what I fly–I mean, minus the ammunition, but they’re basically, the
same sort of setup. And that’s super easy to do. You can build those very easily off the
shelf and just do some tinkering and attach something harmful. It freaks me out for
sure. I think what’s also scary about it is that the first person who ever does that in
America, then the laws will probably change for everybody. And so, I’m sort of nervous
for the destruction it could cause but also for the change in the rules that it could cause.
But so far, we haven’t seen that. Hopefully nobody will try to cause harm, but I do worry
about that, and then also with like robo taxis. The air taxis they’re talking about, or like
air delivery. People are talking about Amazon doing drones to drop everything. I don’t
know if that will cause hobbyists to limit their flying ability. Once I have to work with
thousands of other carrying packages all over the sky, then it gets a little tricky. So in
the future, you might not be able to fly a drone as easily as you can now. Those are two
kind of concerns I guess but whatever. I mean concern is a strong word. It’s more of just
like I hope it doesn’t happen.

DRONEMIND: And do you think there’s a way to balance the positive and possible negative uses of drones?

The Dronalist: Yeah, for sure. You’re seeing Ukraine use it in an almost positive way if
you’re thinking about it from their point of view at least, they’re using weapons that are
very cheap to try to compete with a much bigger adversary. Personally, I consider them
to be the good guys, so, in my head they’re using drones as a force for good. So, in
general, I don’t like how drones are getting used as weapons, I don’t like that association
at all to be honest. I would rather it just be for hobby and as a really cool community building experience. So, I would hope that this can continue and I definitely see that side
of it growing. More and more people are joining groups and meeting people and
learning, sharing ideas and stuff like that. And so, I see that balance. But yeah, I’m
hoping that that we’ll the hobbyists will win out and we’ll just like stop using drones for
bad. We’ll see.

DRONEMIND: Yeah. And is there anything else that you’d like to share?

The Dronalist: I appreciate all the question. These are great questions. I would just say to anyone trying to get into drone photography and cinematography, my main advice to people is to just practice first. Practice a lot, even though it’s simple stuff, it takes a lot of time. And also watch shows and movies where you see drone shots. It’s usually just for a couple seconds and as I said, it’s usually just the establishing shots, the B-roll. You’ll see it more often once you start looking for it. And so, I would say just to practice a lot and then study film. And then watch YouTubers like your favorite drone pilots. That’s how I started, just watching other YouTubers and seeing what they did and I kind molded my craft from there. And most of all have fun with it, it’s a super fun hobby, and yeah, I encourage anyone to give it a shot.

DRONEMIND: All right. Well, thank you for doing this interview. Thank you for your time.

The Dronalist: my pleasure. Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much for having me, best of
luck. Shoot me a link to your blog once you get it up. I’d love to read it.

DRONEMIND: All right. Thanks.

The Dronalist: Awesome, man. I wish you luck on everything you’re doing. Have a great
one.