so anyway i finally got comfortable enough flying that i can actually think about what im shooting instead of just panicking about where the drone is, and now i've hit this wall where all my landscape shots look kind of generic. like technically fine i guess, nothing is blurry or overexposed, but when i look at photos other people post here or on instagram theyre just so much more interesting and i cant put my finger on why.

i think part of it might be that i always end up hovering at the same altitude and just pointing the camera straight down or straight forward. are there angles or approaches that you guys find work well for landscapes specifically? mountains and coastlines mostly if that helps. and also is there anything you do in editing that helps, like i use lightroom but im pretty basic with it

the altitude thing is definitely something to experiment with. i spent a long time defaulting to like 50-80 meters and pointing forward and honestly most of those shots are forgettable. what changed things for me was deliberately flying low and slow over terrain, like just above the treeline or close enough to the water that you get that sense of speed and scale. also tilt the camera to something between straight forward and straight down ? that 45 degree-ish angle where you can see the ground texture AND the horizon at the same time tends to be way more dynamic than either extreme.

for coastlines specifically, flying parallel to the shore instead of perpendicular to it usually gives you a natural leading line with the waterline that pulls the eye through the frame. and if theres any kind of interesting foreground ? rocks, waves breaking, a pier ? getting low enough to make that foreground prominent makes a huge difference vs shooting from high where everything just flattens out.

in lightroom honestly the biggest thing for drone landscape shots is just pulling the highlights way down and lifting the shadows a bit, and then add some texture and clarity if the shot has interesting ground detail. dehaze can be good for mountains but easy to overdo it and make things look weird and crunchy. also try converting some to black and white ? aerial landscape shots in b&w can look really dramatic and it kind of hides the fact that the color grading isnt perfect yet while youre still learning