Creating a photo project like this blog involves inventing a set of rules that I have to stay within when producing content for it. One of the big rules is that I have to leave the house every day to make new images. Period. Shooting them outside of my home from within through a window doesn’t count. Making it out of my front yard does. This is The Main Thing.
Another less prominent rule is, when you don’t feel like doing The Thing is when you must do The Thing. The nature of The Thing changes from one day to the next other than it is always unpleasant or irksome. The Thing this evening was not wanting to pull my drone out of the closet and launch it because I am just so damn tired. I pushed past the fatigue and pulled out the drone case to do The Thing. The Thing was a Wretched Thing tonight.
Gimbal error! Oh. I took the cover off of the camera so the gimbal was free to move. Compass calibration is required. Damn it. I did the turn and flippy flip thing to calibrate the compass. Unable to read SD card. What? Shit. Okay. I swapped MicroSD cards in the drone. Unable to read SD card. Again? Really??? Swapped it again. Okay, good. It works. Software update available! No, not now. Fuck off and stop covering my screen. Low light! Manual navigation only! Yes, I know. Stop nagging. Wind warning! AAAGH. I dropped the drone to 80m elevation. It was probably a gust, right? I’ll try climbing to my legal ceiling of 120m again. Wind warning! Wind warning! Fine. I’ll shoot from 80m. Bloody hell!
I managed to shoot an overlapping series of stills for my panorama and landed the drone without crashing. I merged the images and got a final shot I’m happy with, but there’s a problem… This diary entry doesn’t count. I did The Thing, but I did not do The Main Thing, which was to make it past my front walk.
It’s a Good Thing I took a camera out to shoot the frost this morning and I made it out of my front yard to do it.
This evening’s photograph was produced using a demon-possessed DJI Mini 2 drone.
