curious what everyones workflow looks like for editing aerial photos and footage. i feel like i spend way more time in the air than i do actually doing anything useful with what i capture and then it just sits on a hard drive somewhere

ive tried lightroom for the photos and it works fine i guess but i always end up making everything look super HDR and fake looking because i dont really know where to stop with the sliders. my wife says my edits look like a video game which, fair enough probably. for video i havent even really started, premiere feels overwhelming and ive heard people talk about something called D-log or flat color profiles but i shot everything in normal mode so maybe thats why my footage looks weird when i try to color grade it

not really sure what im asking exactly, just wondering if theres a simpler approach or if everyone goes through this learning curve

the HDR overcooked thing is super common, i did it for ages. the trick with lightroom that helped me was to edit, then step away from the screen for like 10 minutes and look again. your eyes adjust to whatever youre staring at and what seems subtle while youre editing looks insane when you come back fresh. also pulling the clarity and texture sliders back a bit goes a long way, people go wild with those

on the D-log thing ? yeah if you didnt shoot in a flat profile then color grading is going to fight you because the camera already baked contrast and saturation into the image. its not ruined or anything but you have less room to work with. most drones let you switch to a log or d-cinelike profile in the camera settings, worth doing going forward even though the footage looks grey and lifeless straight out of camera. you apply a LUT to it in post and it comes alive. lots of free ones online to start with

honestly same, most of my footage just... sits there. i tell myself ill make a nice edit of every trip and then life happens. the one thing that changed my ratio of capturing to actually finishing something was just lowering my expectations for what a finished edit means. like it doesnt have to be a cinematic 4 minute video with music and color grading. sometimes i just export a few of the best stills and call it done

for composition when youre actually flying ? i started trying to think about it more before i even take off. walking the spot a bit if i can, imagining where the interesting angles might be instead of just going up and spinning around hoping something looks good. leading lines are really worth looking for from above, roads rivers fences that kind of thing draw the eye through the frame in a way thats really hard to replicate from the ground