Behind the scenes – Aerial photography in Phuket Thailand

I’ve been in Phuket Thailand for almost 20 days today which gave my plenty of time to get some aerial footage around this beautiful tropical island. My approach was to settle in as I was going to live here for the month. I rented a scooter for a day to scout and realized how useful it would be for me personally to get around and for my aerial photography.

Transporting the drone #aerialphotography #transport

A photo posted by Greg Hung (@ghung604) on Mar 12, 2016 at 5:34pm PST

Time and Locations to shoot

I had already visited Phuket so I knew which beaches to visit and to film at. In the video you’ll see some of my favorite beaches which include Karon and Kata noi. The Big Buddha is one of the highest points and I made an early morning flight to film there. I was staying in Chalong so shooting at the pier was both convenient and beautiful to film at. I made a trip to the South of Phuket to fly at Cape Promthep and Naiharn beach, which are very close to each other.  I mixed up my flights between after sunrise and before sunset.

Techniques

I used a mixture of automated flight using litchi for the Android as well as the DJI go app for manual flights. Some of the best footage came from using the flyover and point of interest technique, which you’ll see in the big buddha and Cape promthep scenes. I saved some of these flight missions which will be available to students that enroll at my Phantom 3 online course.

I even found some flight missions from other litchi pilots. It’s pretty cool you can save and share flight missions with the exact coordinates, height, speed, and camera positioning for someone else to use. I found out you can export these flight missions to a spreadsheet for modification, which is really powerful.

Succesfully ran someones automated mission #drone #aerialphotography #automated #sharing #cloud #opportunity #chalong #future #litchi #phantom3

A photo posted by Greg Hung (@ghung604) on Mar 12, 2016 at 5:32pm PST

I also had a chance to experiment with with follow me modes on the bike and walking on the beach. In general there aren’t a lot of tall buildings on the island so I was really to enjoy flying and push my boundaries. I flew the 500m limit at Karon beach which features over a 3km stretch of beautiful squeaky white sand.

Teaching orbiting aerial selfies at the beach #aerialphotography #drone

A video posted by Greg Hung (@ghung604) on Mar 22, 2016 at 7:45pm PDT