Drone-Effect Selfie

I've often thought about buying a drone. To get a bird's eye view from a spot that only a bird could see.

And a few years ago, I bought a recreational drone, but it was as cheap as it was inexpensive, and I could never get the control or quality of image that I wanted from it. I still have it but will likely never fly it again. It's useless in wind and I've crashed it into too many trees.

I have as many reasons for not owning a proper drone as I have for wanting one. And so, I sit on the fence.

But I can still get drone-like shots from my 360-degree video camera and I'm having lots of fun with it, even though I can only get so much height as my monopod and selfie stick allow.

Last month, DW and I took our kayaks out for the last time of this season. We drove to Long Sault, along the St. Lawrence Seaway, and paddled around the chain of islands that are linked by the Long Sault Parkway.

It's in this area that, in the 1950s, the St. Lawrence River was flooded so that the seaway would allow large freighters to move goods all the way to Lake Ontario. As a result of the flooding, a few villages were wiped off the face of the map.

There's not much to see when you explore this area: some bits of concrete where building foundations once stood, and the bed of a railway line where it came to a station were all that DW and I saw. We had planned to paddle to some villages that are in the seaway, proper, but high winds and a strong current told us that we shouldn't venture out on that day, so we stuck to the inside part of the parkway.

We made our way to Wales Island, where we found what was left of the railway line and station. The water around this area is very shallow, and we found that sometimes our kayaks would scrape against the gravel and sandy bottom.

Because I was hoping to capture some of our findings on video, I had my Insta360 One R mounted to a selfie stick and attached to a forward hatch on the deck of the kayak. From this vantage, the camera can see me as I paddle and also the scenery ahead of the bow. I swing between views in post-production.

As Insta360 says, shoot first; aim later.

I wasn't that impressed with what we found on our excursion, but to try and get the best angle of view, I extended the selfie stick to its maximum length, which is just under a metre (I have a monopod from Insta360 that extends to a full metre, but it tends to capture water and my selfie stick is waterproof). From this height, I could capture me and everything below the shallow waterline.

I decided that I didn't want to make a video of this kayak trip, but I took some stills from the video. One, I'm currently using as my profile pic on Twitter. Using the Tiny Planet effect, it's perfect for the circular photo.

Here's another screen capture. It's set at the camera's widest angle without creating the Tiny Planet effect. I like how the camera, from this height, was able to hide any stitching lines. After all, there are two lenses that are used for this photo: one, looking forward; the other, looking straight back.

It's as though I took the shot with a drone. But I don't have a drone. Not yet.

Possibly, not ever. I'm still undecided.

Happy Friday!