been lurking here for a while and finally posting because i feel like my photos are technically fine now ? exposure is decent, not too blurry ? but they still look kind of boring. like i can look at someone elses aerial shot of a random field and think wow thats amazing, and then i take a photo of what seems like the same kind of thing and it just looks like google maps. im sure its a composition thing but i dont really have a background in photography so i dont know where to start. do the usual photography rules even apply when youre shooting straight down or at a weird angle from the air? any advice would be helpful, even just like how you personally think about framing shots when youre up there

the rule of thirds still totally applies and honestly its one of the first things i think about. like dont just center everything. if youre shooting a coastline, try to put the horizon line on the upper third and let the water fill the frame, or vice versa. leading lines are huge too ? roads, rivers, fences, rows of crops, whatever is in the scene that has a natural line, try to position yourself so that line pulls the eye through the frame. the straight down shots (nadir) can look cool but they need something visually interesting like a strong pattern or a lone object that creates a sense of scale. honestly the thing that changed my shots most was just slowing down and hovering for a bit before i hit the shutter. move the drone around, look at the screen, try different altitudes and angles. i used to just fly up and shoot immediately and you miss so much by doing that

something nobody told me for ages ? shadows are your friend, especially in the morning or late afternoon. a tree casting a long shadow, a person walking, a building, whatever. the shadow adds depth and makes the 2D aerial image feel like it has some dimension to it. also for editing i started dodging and burning just slightly on aerial shots the same way landscape photographers do on ground shots and it makes a pretty big difference for pulling out texture in fields or water. lightroom works fine for this, nothing fancy needed