Resting Elk

This one has a fun drone story. I was hired to shoot a 7000 acre ranch for a real estate company. We spent four days filming this ranch at two different times of the year. The second time I went was a result of them going cheap. I shot their ranch the year before with the Mavic 2 Pro, another guy on the real estate team told the realtor he could save them money and shoot it for free with a Mavic Pro. The end result was no usable footage and an old Mavic Pro on the side of the mountain. So after the failed attempt I got a call, they wanted me to come back but this time he had an additional task. The retrieval of the lost drone. I accepted and off we went. I first used the telephoto on my Mavic 3 to find the drone, then not wanting to destroy my new drone with the risky operation, landed and got to work with my Mavic 2. I had bought a device to attach to the bottom of the Mavic 2. It allowed me to attach multiple bungee chords and use the hook from the bottom of it to snag the drone. For a moment I felt like I was playing the crane game at the arcade trying to nab a prize but this was far more challenging as the drone was stuck between two rocks in a dark area on a bright cliff. Once locked on I switched to manual and increased my exposure so I could see in the void and from there I battled wind and nerves to grab the drone. I remember it was a huge adjustment flying with that kind of weight on the drone. It took a couple of attempts but when I finally snagged it, I went full power to gain elevation. It was borderline the most it could lift because once I cleared the rock, the combo of wind and tilting to fly forward with the drone while trying to back off the power (just to keep it at the same elevation) I struggled to keep it in the air, once that downward momentum begun it became more of a controlled landing but at that point I could activate the device letting go of the drone about 3 feet off of the gound at which point my Mavic 2 stabilized and I could set her down nicely.

We spent the rest of the day cruising the ranc filming eveything we could but the one thing we really wanted was some wildlife. All day we got close to wild hogs, deer, cattle and a bunch of ground squirrels. But the ultimate prize were the Elk that roam central to northern California.

We were on our way out of the ranch and the sun began to set. We had to stop to open the gate and thats when we saw them, these Elk settling in for the night. I quickly flew over and took advantage of the mavic 3 cine telephoto. I started at 400 feet, lined up my shot, snapped a few with the telephoto and wasn't happy. I then flipped into cinema mode and very slowly brought it down. I'm sure they could hear it but I suppose with the local traffic and urban areas around the ranch, they had grown comfortable and accustomed to weird noises. They didn't react once, so I ended up taking this shot 12 mm and cropped it down to make it look even closer. Still one of my favorite shots and I consider it a prize for the task completed earlier.