![Hallaton Castle from the air.](https://christweedphoto.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/hallaton-castle-3-1024x575.jpg)
About 18 months ago or so I bought myself a small drone, the DJI Mini 2. I thought it would be cool to get a new perspective on the world and be able to take some rather different photographs.
I’ve not used it much since I bought it so I decided to break it out and try to get more familiar with it this weekend.
I headed out to the Leicestershire village of Hallaton where I know there are the remains of a Norman motte and bailey castle.
![Hallaton Castle from the air.](https://christweedphoto.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/hallaton-castle-1-1024x731.jpg)
I had actually flown the drone here before in the early days of my ownership but I was really focussed on getting to grips with the basics of flying the thing and although I took some photos and video I wasn’t really concentrating on that at the time.
I need to practice way more. I want to learn to fly the thing smoothly so that I can capture better looking video. Taking stills is easy by comparison. Just fly the thing up there, point it towards your chosen subject and pick your moment. Video is a whole different ball game. Flying the drone around your subject without jerky movements whilst keeping your subject nicely framed – yeah, I need a lot more practice at that. DJI do help by adding a few programmed manoeuvres such as circling a subject or spiraling out from it but I want to learn to have that level of control manually.
![Hallaton Castle from the air.](https://christweedphoto.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/hallaton-castle-2-1024x732.jpg)
The three photos above were taken on Saturday 22nd April 2023 at heights of between around 60 and 100 meters above local ground level. I shoot in both raw and jpg and then process the raw files in Lightroom (and whatever other bits of processing software I might feel like using at the time) as normal.
The video… Yeah, the video… Well, I managed to produce something but I do have a fairly steep learning curve here. Yes, I need to learn to fly the drone with more finesse but I also have never really done much video work of any kind. And it shows. But hey, I’m learning.
You can view the video on YouTube here.
I like these images, Hallaton has such a long history, great to see this in a different perspective.
Thank you. Yes, lots of history and a lovely part of the county to walk around. I keep meaning to go out there to shoot the bottle kicking but I’m always put off by the crowds.