A Compehensive Guide to Inexpensive Pole Aerial Photography

As a cinematographer and photographer I am always looking for new ways to capture familiar scenes. For the past couple of years I have been reading and learning a lot about remote control (RC) copters with the dream of mounting my HDSLR to it to capture beautiful aerial stills and cinematic video footage - but I just can't seem to get myself to plunk down the money for one. Aside from the initial investment there is also the learning curve, potential for crash & burn, and the fact that I just don't know where I'd find the time.

A couple of weeks ago I came up with an idea that I thought just might allow me to capture some aerials of a wedding ceremony, especially outdoor ceremonies, with motion video - without it taking eons to learn or a big financial investment. I thought "What if I used one of the new cameras or camcorders that feature 1080/60p video recording and multi-axis stabilization, also called "active stabilization" and mounted it to a tall pole which I would hand hold. Once the pole was stable I could then slowly twist the pole to do a pan and even slowly walk with the pole if I wanted to add some tracking motion. 

Pole Aerial Photography was not something I had come up with, despite not knowing about it in advance.   After doing a web search I discovered a ton of great information on how to convert an inexpensive paint extension pole into a camera extension pole to capture great aerial stills and video.   Read my full article on Pole Aerial Photography here .