so i feel like ive hit a wall with my aerial stuff. technically the footage is fine, exposure is good, its smooth, no jello, but when i watch it back its just... boring? like its always the same shot. drone goes up, hovers, maybe a slow push forward. i see other peoples stuff and theres something about how they frame things that makes you want to keep watching and i cant figure out what im missing.

i shoot a lot of coastal stuff and forests, occasionally some urban stuff. been at it for about a year and a half. just feels like i have all the technical stuff down but the creative side isnt clicking. anyone been through this and figured out how to get past it?

yeah this is actually really common and the honest answer is you probably need to start thinking about leading lines and scale more intentionally. from the air everything can start to look abstract pretty fast which sounds cool but without something to anchor the viewers eye it just feels like a screensaver. try to find a road, a river, a fence line, something that leads across the frame and position your drone so that line takes the viewer somewhere. also putting a tiny human or a car in the shot does something almost magical for sense of scale, suddenly the landscape feels massive instead of just... flat.

the other thing that helped me was watching my shots back and asking myself what the actual subject is. like not just 'the beach' but what specifically am i trying to show. if i cant answer that in one sentence the shot is probably too vague.

honestly the thing that unstuck me was flying lower than felt comfortable. i always defaulted to going way up high because it felt more dramatic but some of my favorite shots now are like 15-20 feet off the ground skimming through trees or along a shoreline. changes the whole feel and you start noticing things you completely miss from 200 feet up. just watch your surroundings obviously lol