When I took off my drone in the Liwa Desert, Abu Dhabi, I saw nothing but clouds in all directions — aside from one patch of sand dunes visible from the sky.

Sometimes photography is all about serendipity and luck. Sure, I did do some planning before this shot, but it's still almost entirely Mother Nature's doing.

The technical details of this photo aren't very complicated. I took it with the Mavic 2 Pro drone on 5-shot burst mode. Then, I averaged the five pictures in Photoshop to reduce noise. (Even though I was at base ISO 100, there was still some noise because of the fairly small sensor size).

I did do some minimal processing in Lightroom, but that was all it took. I find it hard to imagine better conditions than there were on this morning, and perhaps it's no surprise that it led to my favorite drone photo I've ever taken!

(For those who asked, this flight was completely legal; we had all the proper permits with GCAA in UAE.)

~Spencer
  / spencercoxphoto  

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Here is all the photo equipment I use: https://bhpho.to/3XUv32a

And here’s my video gear to film this video: https://bhpho.to/3Yt8th1

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