By Scott Shephard

My title is a too-simple formula for getting a good photo. The one thing I left out of the formula, though, is “good luck.” And that’s what was involved in the capture of this image yesterday morning. I will freely admit that luck is ocassionally a factor in my photography, though I prefer to think that if I get a good photo, it’s more about the saying that “fortune favors the prepared mind.”

Prior to getting this photo, I had been working a small grove of trees several miles away just after sunrise. By the time I got to this location, the sun was up, the light was much cooler but clouds were moving in. When I lifted the drone off, I was really just going to work the tree line you see in this photo, but as I looked down at my monitor, I saw the fence and snow-covered road in the frame and I though, “I wonder what that will look like?” Frankly, I think the fence and the strong shadows of the fence posts are essential to making this photo what it is.

And here’s a lesson if you are doing drone photography: be prepared to see things you don’t see from ground level. That may seem like a no brainer but after two years of working on my drone photography skills, I still often surprised. If I had been 15’ tall, I might have been able to get this photo with my Canon 5DII. But I have a drone instead.

Mavic 2 Pro Hasselblad L1D-20c 1/640s f/4.0 ISO100 10.26mm (35mm eq:28mm) 5 frame HDR