First commercial steps with my drone

Perhaps the funny “featured image” will give the game away, but after buying a drone in December (a Mavic 2 Pro), I’ve been working on a double track – learn how to fly it safely and take some interesting photos and videos and secondly, learn all about the law and regulations around flying a drone commercially in the USA. Using the images and videos from a drone on stock agencies is definitely counted as commercial use and while I’m sure many of the videos on the stock agencies are probably from unlicensed pilots, the fines from being found out can be quite significant. So I’m pleased to report that I have passed that FAA test and can now fly my drone commercially and start to sell my images online!

I was lucky enough to visit Hawaii in January for a technology conference (yes, I still do that) and so used my drone as a hobbyist to take photos and videos in a warm environment. The weather was very good to me as well and so I saw a lot of the island and took some interesting shots that I can now start to sell. Coincidentally, I saw that there was a blog contest over on Dreamstime about drones and photography and so that was a perfect opportunity to write about my experiences to date, both in terms of what I have learned photographically and how I went about studying for that test. You can find the full article here, and if you find it useful, please click (when you are signed in to Dreamstime) on the green Useful button up in the top left of the page. This contest was for long articles over 2000 words, so hopefully you will find something interesting in it!

I’ll write more about drone related things going forward and how they are helping (I hope) my earnings!