This week it’s our pleasure to introduce you to our latest photography friend Matt Robinson. Matt is a drone photographer and with all the buzz around drone photography we decided that it would be a great idea to catch up with Matt to see how he got started…

Great to finally talk to you Matt, we’re loving the photos you share on CoinaPhoto, especially the Drone Exposure ones. Tell us a bit about yourself. What do you do?

I’ve been developing my own business strategy and how I can make money using drones. There’s hundreds of way you can make money using aerial photography with drones or aerial filmography. I thought those are always going to be there and I need to establish myself.

There’s big plans for where Aerial Exploration can go and I do have a strategy for getting young kids who are gamers who are stuck in the house all the time I want to transition and use their hand and eye coordination skills to drone flying – bring the drone zone academy in future – I do have plans for moving into the teaching phases as well.

How did you get into photography, and what made you want to share your pictures with the world?

My co-worker was a big photographer, he was already really interested in it and he’d bring in this big Nikon – and I’d be like wow this is awesome so do you just carry this everywhere? And he was like well what if you want to take a picture and you don’t have anything – the best camera you have is the one you should have with you. He started to get me into real photography – I never considered myself a photographer until this year.

I started following Jared Polin FroKnowsPhoto –I really liked how easily you could fly the DJI Phantom II and I just started thinking what are the possibilities that you can do with a drone.

What made you want to start sharing your images with the world?

Because I’ve started to get into photography I’ve started to look at different photo sharing websites – Instagram and all that, I’ve liked uploading to those but it seems like you have to do so much work. It’s good that you’re getting your work out there but the likes aren’t really worth it if you’re investing a lot of time into it you kind of want to get something out of it.

I actually searched Twitter for #drone and I saw the CoinaPhoto Twitter and they were saying do you have any drone photos and that’s when I looked at it and said Wow you can get paid for uploading photos. I thought drone photos are very unique and not many people have seen them and I’m sure that they would be well received.

What’s your favourite element of drone photography?

It’s the controllability, it’s very easy to compose a photo you can set it up really well and have a live video feed straight to your phone. So I can see exactly what photos I’m taking – you know its way up there.

I enjoy different perspectives you know macro photography, timelapse photos or long exposure photos I mean that’s the element of new perspective photos and drone photography is the new perspective.

I love seeing where I grew up from the ground, I love seeing it from the air and sharing it with people.

Anywhere you may go it may just be a golf course but that’s somebody’s golf course and they’ve put a lot of time and effort into it – to be able to show them a new perspective relatively cheaply – they would have to hire a helicopter to do it – so it’s win win and everybody loves you for it.

How did you acquire your skills?

All of my skills are all self-taught and the photography over the years I’ve just learnt which photos look better – composing photos, it just kind of comes naturally to me now.

For flying the drone I’ll share this with you guys within the first 5 minutes I had crashed the drone and destroyed the camera on-board. So when I was up in the air I was trying some cool flight manoeuvres. My thumbs happened to go in that orientation and the motors went off 100 ft in the air.

I was able to fix the drone so that I could use it as a trainer even though the camera was broken. The trainer just helps people to learn how to fly it because you don’t have to worry about the camera on-board – it’s kind of a blessing in disguise. I now have a stepped training drone for filming.

You spend a lot of time in the great outdoors, would you say nature is your biggest inspiration from a Photography stand point? Why?

My biggest inspiration, it would have to be my grandfather he passed away a few years ago. Growing up he’d always take me outside and we’d always walk to the back lake or go look for deer on the side of the road. My grandfather you know is one of my hero’s. His other passion was nature and I think that’s where I get it from.

I wanted to have a career that’s outside with wildlife and geography and he’s my biggest inspiration of wanting to stay routed in who I am.  I don’t want to be all techy with computers but I don’t want to lose sight of where I came from – what made me who I am today. The drone taking photos of nature is perfect – that’s where I get my inspiration.

Is nature something that you’ve been exploring a bit more with the drones?

My very first thought of what I could use a drone for was I’m really big into brook fishing but the biggest problem with that is if you’re trying to explore a new area you find a bridge – you’d typically have to walk in two or three hours to scope out any good fishing holes. But with the drone I can send it over the river system and you can scope out good fishing holes from the air live straight to your phone.

The drone emits its own Wi-Fi and its then picked up at my control station. The Wi-Fi repeater sends the signal to my mobile phone so that you can see what the drone sees.

Do you think people are taking more of an interest in drone photography through social media?

That’s exactly how we share our videos through social networks. Imagine sharing your videos before we had the internet, you’d have to go in person and share your photos that way.

The drone community is becoming very organised with comradery and we are helping each other out by building up #droneography. The best way to do that is through social networks and how easily accessible the world is at your fingertips, you can share your photos with tens of thousands of people at the click of a button .

Do you use Instagram?

I used to, that’s on my phone – I’ve taken a break from it. I have been sharing my iPhonetography pictures on there. For now I think I’m sticking with the desktop accessible apps. I think if they had a desktop version it would open up their market a lot more.

What are your thoughts on CoinaPhoto?

CoinaPhoto is the next big social network; it’s not using it as an advertising platform. If you can gain from a website or social media platform in monetary value then that’s great.

For my droneography I feel with the CoinaPhoto in particular people have been rewarding unique and creative photos.

When I’ve been doing the drone exposure photos and long exposure night photos with the LED’s people have been receiving those very well and I really enjoy doing those because they really are unique. It’s very exciting to be able to share my passion with people and if I can get rewarded for it as well. CoinaPhoto is right up that ally.

What would you say that your favourite feature is?

The thing that excites me the most is the lucky strike game and the brick breaker. If anyone wants to send me a Lucky Strike or Brick Breaker request that would be great but be warned I’m pretty good at it.

Top 3 tips for aspiring drone photographers

1 – Learn how to fly it safely before taking any pictures – I can’t stress that enough. There’s a lot of bad rep coming from these because of inexperienced people flying drones, you just need to know the rules and regulations. There are a lot of small things that you just won’t know until you experience flying these.

2- Ask permission before taking flight - Have permission from the owners of wherever you are going to be taking pictures.

3- Always have fun – If you’re no longer having fun and you see it as a job you’ve lost touch of why you’ve got into it but you should always have fun taking photos. You should take photos that make you happy because generally that will relate to making other people happy as well.

Top 3 definitely don’ts

1-      Don’t fly over water - For the first 2 months because those little things that can happen will happen to an inexperienced pilot. So if it were to drop it would be better in a field or a soft area, you would not want to drop it on a beach where there are people in the water.

2-      Don’t fly in adverse weather – You can be caught off guard. I’ve had a few instances when I could see rain in the distance from the drone and I had to bring it back and put it in a bag really quickly because the rain was right on top of us.

3-      Don’t fly around animals or people – They might not want you to take their photos and if you don’t have permission you could get yourself into a law suit for invasion of privacy.

That’s all from Matt for now but we’ll be sure to catch up with him again soon. Remember he loves our Lucky Strike game so make sure you send him a request.

That’s all from us for now. Happy snapping!