SEASONS One Year Project

Tony Yang October 17, 2019 0 Comments Photography

I have a lot of fun flying my drone around the world on my travels, but I thought it would be just as beautiful to film where I live. Thanks to the third-party app Litchi, I can pre-program waypoints for my DJI Mavic Pro, and have it repeatedly fly the same route over and over. I thought this would be a perfect way to get a change in seasons through out the year from different parts of my neighborhood. I setup a few locations where I would like to go back and film, somewhere convenient but still scenic. I was able to use a combination of Google Earth and Litchi Mission Hub to plan all my flights at home, then run test flights in the real world to make minor tweaks. Once I was happy with the flight plan after many attempts, while holding my thumb very closely to the controller’s pause button in case the path led me straight into a tree, I started showing up at all the locations and just hit the play button to let the Mavic do its thing. Long story short, after a year’s worth of footage, I was happy enough to start editing in Adobe Premiere Pro.

The most tedious task was the manually align all the footage to match. The GPS on the Mavic is good, but not perfect. A lot of the footage are misaligned due to inaccurate GPS coordinates by a few feet, and that could lead to very different footage when the objects are so close to the camera. Any minor changes cause a big difference in perspective when trying to align videos. Unfortunately my recordings were not high res enough that scaling clips up to match other clips led to soft parts in the video. This will be fixed in the next project with UHD 4K recording!

I’ve since moved to a new county, and with that comes new scenery and new flight plans. Please enjoy!

Our Budget Trip to LA

Tony Yang September 25, 2019 0 Comments Vacation

We travel a lot for photography work and we usually attach a mini vacation along with the trip, however this usually ends up being a struggle lugging all our gear along with personal luggage. I think it still surprises us that my gadgets always ends up taking more luggage than my wife’s clothing, makeup, and shoes combined. We decided this one time to try traveling as light as possible, a budget oriented vacay. My wife’s deal hunting skills got us round trip flights to Los Angeles for $133 each on Spirit Airlines, with a personal item only (no carry-on) – it was whatever we could fit under the seat. Challenge accepted! We had the luxury of staying at my brother’s beautiful home by View Park, LA and he graciously let us borrow his Tesla Model 3. With our personal bags packed and our TSA PreCheck and Priority Pass ready, we hit up Newark Airport like we owned the joint. The only camera gear I brought was the Olympus Mirrorless system, which allowed me to fit all my lens and body into the personal bag. I specifically wanted to try out the Lumix 7-14mm lens to see if it’s a useful lens when traveling. This came at a perfect time since the new iPhone 11 also announced their new super-wide lens which is exactly as wide as this Lumix. So is it worth bringing a similar lens if the cameraphone can get the same focal length? The short answer is, a tiny fingernail sized sensor will never compete with a larger sensor. It all boils down to how compact do you really need your camera versus quality. For most people, the new third lens on the smartphone will be sufficient.

This trip is also a brief review on a lens, car, and food. Just the way I like it.

Vacation in the Bavarian Alps

Tony Yang August 1, 2019 0 Comments Vacation

Our latest adventure took us to Germany, for the main reason that we were going to Ukraine for a family wedding event. Ukraine is somewhere we go often, and I highly recommend visiting the large historic city of Lviv someday. So why Germany? United flights allow a free stop-over when booking your flight with points, so after careful consideration of which EU country to visit, we finally chose Munich. I’ve been there once in the past for an engagement session (and a few laps on the Nurburgring!), so a personal vacation there with my wife would be an extremely different experience and more memorable.

Curacao

Tony Yang March 7, 2019 2 Comments Vacation

Our first family trip to the Caribbeans was Aruba. This time, we went for the “C” in the ABC islands, Curacao. It’s a slightly larger island, although you can still get from one end to the other and back in a car on the same day. We stayed at an Airbnb which meant we cooked most of our meals. The most exciting part of our trips are the snorkeling, and fishing. I am terrible with sea sickness, so the majority of the fishing trip I was knocked out. Good thing Olya took over the filming while I was unconscious! Just like Aruba, Curacao is extremely windy which is wonderful for keeping the bugs away. I was hesitant at first trying to fly my Mavic Pro in such windy conditions, but after a few test flights I felt confident enough that it could hold steady and not get dragged out to sea. I really enjoyed all the ocean shots, and none of the beach goers had any issues, and a bunch of locals came up to me out of curiosity and we held some interesting conversations. What a friendly and happy island. Next trip will be “B” for Bonaire!

Disneyland!

Tony Yang February 2, 2019 0 Comments Vacation

This was my wife and my first time at Disneyland! It was an awesome experience to save this trip for my fun and adorable wife who loves adventures and who allows me to be a kid on the inside and out. I think a trip to Disney World is in order. With all my new video gear like drone and heavy duty gimbal, I am leaning towards going back to a more personal perspective on video for our trips. Ultra smooth video feels high production and less like I’m actually there. I did handheld non-stabilized video with the Canon 5D Mark III on a Sigma 24mm f1.4 Art Lens in 1080p. Almost unheard of nowadays with newer video technology being so affordable. This may be one of my favorite videos so far!

Greece Vacation Video

Tony Yang November 20, 2018 0 Comments Vacation

Greece was the first international country we visited where I had a chance to fly my Mavic Pro. There was some nervousness when bringing a drone to a country where I wasn’t familiar with the culture or local laws, but as soon as we got into our rental car and drove around the city within the first hour I felt pretty comfortable. I don’t know if it’s the culture or the economic status, or a combination of both, but everything about the Greece felt laid back, it felt like I could do no wrong here as a tourist, especially during the low season in March.

We have plenty of photos in our previous blog posts Part 1 and Part 2. It was nice being able to film with minimal people in the shots and it also helps to start filming early in the day before the bus loads of tourists converge. There were no signs anywhere in the city of Athens that prohibited drone flying, even around the ancient ruins. I took off from outside the perimeter of the sites and made sure not to get too close. I definitely don’t want to be responsible for any damages or injuries. The only place in Greece I noticed “No drone” signs was in Santorini. I can only imagine how it would be a prime spot for all pilots to fly. Of course, I did fly mine too only because it was low season and I thought the impact to the handful of tourists would be negligible. I made sure to stay away from residences and hotels, just a few overhead shots over the water.

Some of my favorite shots were Olya driving the car while I chased us with the drone at full speed. It really shows how important our drives are during our vacations, being able to stop anywhere and see the sights that aren’t on the tour bus agendas. However, sometimes we would arrive at a spot only to be followed immediately by a bus full of Chinese tourists! This literally happens in every country.

Please like the video if you enjoyed it!

Crazy Rich Chai

Tony Yang October 29, 2018 1 Comment Pets, Photography

Probably one of my favorite movies of 2018 is Crazy Rich Asians for many reasons. One of the reasons is how much I loved Awkwafina’s character in the movie. Her personality doesn’t fit the stereotypical role of how one might expect an Asian woman to act – she is fiesty, loud, and absolutely hilariously uncensored. All the traits I would imagine my little Chai Latte if she were a hooman. Chai’s not your typical Shih Tzu, she’s got more energy and some might even call her a crazy dog, which is why we love her so much. It wasn’t hard to decide to choose Awkwafina’s character Peik Lin in the movie as Chai’s costume. Her cute bunny shirt was the centerpiece.

4 Seasons 4 Months 4 Countries

Tony Yang July 17, 2018 0 Comments Photography, Vacation

Earlier in 2018 we spent a lot of time traveling between multiple countries around the world. I was fortunate to be able to bring my DJI Mavic Pro everywhere with me and flew without any issues. With the array of topography and hemispheres, we drove through all 4 seasons within the 4 month travel period. When I finally arrived back home and found this awesome new song that I was inspired to make this video. The video includes scenes from back home in the U.S., Greece, Ukraine, and South Africa.

Universal Studios Florida VIP Experience

Tony Yang June 30, 2018 0 Comments Vacation

We were lucky to have such good friends who won VIP tickets for Universal Studios invite my wife and I. We loved our tour guide Kendall who made our experience very smooth and efficient navigating through a huge park and doing everything we were interested in within our two day trip. Now we can never go back without a VIP pass to a theme park. Thanks for spoiling us Gregg!

The whole trip was filmed with GoPro HERO5 on a Zhiyun Smooth-Q gimbal.

Greece South to Santorini

Tony Yang June 5, 2018 0 Comments Photography, Vacation

After the first half of our Greece trip going north, we headed south towards our next destination, Santorini! On our way down, we stopped by The Rhion Fortress with a great view of the Rion-Antirion Bridge, and thanks to Google, we found a little restaurant along the way called Fast Food Pitta Bomb. The drive there was slightly suspicious as the mini island town looked a little run down and empty. We have to remember it was low season so it didn’t feel like a popular destination, but the ratings were good so we gave it a go. At roughly $2 per gyro, it was one of the best we’ve had so far! Olya said she could’ve eaten two. With our tummies happy, we were ready to get back to Athens.