this has been bugging me for a while. i look at other peoples drone photos and they just feel like they have this quality to them, like everything is placed intentionally. mine always feel kind of random even when im trying. i do know about rule of thirds and i try to apply it but it doesnt seem to make a huge difference.

i think part of my problem is i just hover and then tilt the camera down and shoot, maybe im not being deliberate enough about finding the actual shot before i take it. anyone else go through this phase and what helped you get past it. is it just a reps thing where you fly enough and your eye develops or is there actual stuff i should be studying

honestly a lot of it is just reps yeah but there was one specific thing that helped me more than anything ? i stopped treating the drone as a hovering camera and started flying to the composition instead of composing after i arrived. like fly around the subject, try different altitudes and angles, actually move the aircraft to find the frame rather than just tilting and panning from one spot. sounds obvious but it changed everything for me.

also look up photographers who shoot from planes or helicopters, not drone stuff, and study how they frame things. guys like Alex MacLean have this incredible sense of geometry from above and just absorbing that work for a few weeks made my eye way better. the leading lines thing is real too, roads, rivers, fences, they do a lot of compositional work for you if you position yourself to use them.

are you shooting stills or video? because for stills i actually found that shooting in portrait orientation sometimes makes a huge difference for certain subjects, everyone defaults to landscape because thats what the sensor wants but sometimes flipping it changes the whole feel. anyway i went through this same frustration and i dont think ive totally solved it but it does get better gradually, you start seeing the shot before you launch eventually