This past week has been extremely difficult for me. In addition to dealing with a bad cold, my mother has been in hospital with liver failure. The other day I barely left my flat at all: probably the first time I've spent an entire day in Queenstown without going out at all. The next day I cried nearly all day. It would be absolutely devastating to lose my mother.
When I think about it, my mother did an admirable job raising all six of us: all of us graduated from high school, none of us smoke, use drugs, or have ever been arrested, and none of us became parents when we were teenagers (none of us have children to this day). Three of us hold at least one college degree and two of us have travelled internationally. Many parents who deal with an alcohol addiction would likely roll over and say to their kids "do whatever the hell you like." My mother never did that and raised us strictly, putting forth great effort into us and very little into herself; she'd make dinner for as many as 10 children and then not eat dinner herself. She has always taught us strong work ethic and to be the best we can be. I could have 50 A's and one fail on my report card and she'd run me into the ground over the one fail and not say a word about all the A's I got.
Our mother would encourage us to carry on regardless of what's going on with her, so I did exactly that today with her in my thoughts. My latest photographic medium is a Mavic Pro drone. It looks like an alien but it really takes to the skies! Foolishly, I tried to give my housemate and his son a demonstration inside my flat the other day and I slammed it directly into a bookshelf and broke two of the propellers. With all the crap I've gone through, now this happens! That's OK, I can buy a new drone but I can't buy a new Mom. The propellers were fixed within minutes but I opted to fly outdoors in a more secluded area.
Today I hitchhiked to Bob's Cove though I had some difficulty with the thumb today. Three Taswegians would picked me up and I told them they'd be in for a treat by visiting Bob's Cove. Unfolding my drone, I got the remote control and had it ready for takeoff. The propellers spun and then majestically, up it went, this time without a broken propeller. A whole new medium to help expand my travel collection. The Mavic Pro drone is most definitely futuristic! It can fly 120 metres into the air and as many as 5 km away, and can even fly over water without it dropping from the sky. When you need your drone to come back quickly, you can just hit the "return to home" button and it will fly back to you. Some drones even have special "feet" so they can land on water without sinking. Turning the camera to face directly down, I snapped a photo of above; I'm just a speck from 120 metres high.
The Queenstown area is controlled airspace so you have to log your flight on a website called AirShare as you're considered an aircraft pilot.
With a drone, it opens me to a whole new world of aerial photography. There are many places I'd love to go back to (e.g. Lord Howe Island) just so I can snap some drone photos.
Over the next few weeks I'll be snapping photos with my latest means of photography...one where I can get photos of places where I can't normally reach.
