Drone photography for beginners: these are the 15 stupid-simple drone photography tips that will take your images from basic to brilliant! Bonus: a quick start guide of what drone to buy for beginners, overall drone tips for beginners, and more!

As a travel photographer, my drone is one of my absolute favorite and go-to pieces of my photography gear that has completely changed my photography for the better. The aerial perspective you can get with a drone is unlike any other shot you could take, and it’s so fun to play with patterns, perspectives, and even self-portraits.

If you are a beginner to flying a drone, or even a novice drone pilot looking to improve your photos, this guide is for YOU! Drones don’t have to be daunting – you absolutely can jump in and quickly get good shots. Plus, recent drones have so many safety features that make them SO easy to fly – you’ll be taking epic travel photos in no time. Ready to fly? Let’s dive into my top tips for drone photography for beginners!

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Your first drone is SO exciting – and all you want to do is go out and immediately FLY. But before you run off and accidentally crash your drone on your first try, make a plan to do your first flight somewhere with a lot of big open space with minimal crash hazards – an empty field is a great pick! Start HERE instead of starting at your photographic location of choice. Make sure you familiarize yourself with all the features, especially safety features. 

Practice basic drone movements so you become familiar with the controls, and run through some mini flight drills. Get a feel for where your drone is by keeping it in sight, looking at the controller, and looking at where it is in relation to other objects. Once you’ve mastered all of this, you are ready to start taking photos!

Okay, I know I said you’re ready to go, BUT if I can give you one last pre-flight tip – it’s to open Google Earth or Google maps and start figuring out compositions and photos you might like to take BEFORE you fly. This way, you SAVE BATTERY life – once on location you already know the image you want to take instead of wasting time searching for what kind of photo to take.

There are a few options of what kind of files your images take – and my personal favorite is to have the drone save images in both JPG + RAW. The JPGs are great for quick social media shares with minimal edits, and the RAW files are MUCH larger image files that record much more data & details than JPG files, allowing you a greater flexibility and ability to edit your images. Details in the shadows are so easily lost, and RAW files can help you recover that – versus JPG where you’re pretty much out of luck.

Once you’ve got a feel for flying and have a couple practice flights under your belt, switch your drone photograph settings from auto to Pro mode. This will give you full control of the shutter speed, ISO, and white balance settings (aperture is fixed, however). Use the controller screen to see real-time feedback of how changing these settings affect your shot. Aim to keep your ISO as low as possible to reduce grain in your image, and make sure your drone is hovering still for any longer shutter speeds. At this point, it’s a great idea to have the histogram enabled to see how your highlights and shadows are doing (pre-flight: learn how to read a histogram!).

I have NEVER regretted taking a panoramic drone shot – it is truly epic! Don’t forget to check out and utilize other photo settings. Just remember panoramas can take a bit of battery – but you can still fly the drone while the image is processing once the drone has taken all the required shots. I’d recommend waiting for the panorama to finish, check the image itself, and move the drone afterward in case you need to change up the shot.
If the scene you’re shooting has a high dynamic range (very bright areas mixed with very dark areas, such as a sunset), use the AEB, or automatic bracketing mode – this will take multiple photos at different exposures, allowing you to combine them in post-processing.

Experiment with multiple shots – you might expect to like one view better and then realize a different perspective or angle was actually a better photograph! Play with taking drone photos low to the ground vs high up, a top-down shot vs an angled shot, a vertical vs horizontal image, and so on.

Which brings me to my next piece of advice – don’t get stuck on just ONE composition and lose battery when you could have taken even more shots. Make sure to turn your drone 180 degrees (fully around) at LEAST once – you never know what was right beh

Epic landscapes are fantastic images, but some of my favorite drone shots are ones that play with lines, patterns, or geometry. Leading lines are strong compositional tools that make for a great shot, and patterns capture the brain in such a satisfying way. Don’t be afraid of abstract shots!

What works for everyday photography also works for drone photography! Learn different compositional techniques and tools and try them out on your next shoot. The rule of thirds is a popular technique for getting captivating images, and it helps you break out of the mold of always centering your subject. But once you’ve learned the “rules”, don’t be afraid to break them too – photography is subjective, after all.

Did you know you could do long-exposure drone photography? If you want an image of a silky-smooth waterfall, you’ll need a high-stop ND filter – this will darken the exposure enough to allow you to drop the shutter speed to slow enough to blur out the water. Polarizing filters are fantastic for shots involving water – the ocean, rivers, and more – as they remove glare and intensify colors.

No photograph is complete without a bit of editing! Since you already followed tip #3 about always shooting in RAW, you’ll have a larger image file packed full of pixel data to work with. RAW images can often look a bit dull or flat to begin with, but don’t worry – editing will bring out all the amazing colors and detail you originally saw on the controller screen. Developing your editing skills and later your personal editing style is a HUGE part of learning how to take epic drone photos, so experiment with editing, play around, and learn as you go to improve your skills.

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