Laupāhoehoe Point, aerial edition

Yesterday morning I visited Laupāhoehoe Point  with a photographer friend of mine. I'd told him about getting a drone, and he suggested an outing wheret I could fly my drone to get some photos and he could get some photos of it (and me) in action. I last visited Laupāhoehoe Beach Park back in 2015, but it was pretty much the same as I remembered.

This shot is back up the gulch we drove down into to reach the point.

Laupāhoehoe Point sits at the end of a gulch, a little spit of land jutting into the Pacific in stark contrast to the sea cliffs on either side. Both times I've been it was beautifully sunny weather with a few clouds, and a strong wind blowing off the ocean. This was actually the windiest I've taken my drone up, so I was a bit worried it'd encounter some problems. Luckily, the Mini 3 can handle surprisingly strong winds—while it was definitely buffeted about a bit, I was never worried that it wasn't going to be able to make it flying against the wind or anything like that.

Panorama at Laupāhoehoe Point. Click for a larger view.

Though, due to the wind I didn't fly quite as high as I might otherwise have. I got this nice panorama looking out to sea from about 50 meters up (of the 120 m I could've gone). The drone-generated panorama had some visible glitches in the horizon (probably from the aforementioned-buffeting), but I saved the raw photos and was able to get this lovely panorama out of Hugin. I got it at a good time; the wind was intermittently blowing clouds overhead, and I was surprised to see, upon reviewing the photos, just how washed out and dull the ones in the shade looked compared to the one in full sunlight. (You can see this in the top photo, actually, though the valley further back in the center was still unshadowed.) It doesn't show in the panorama due to the distortion, but those sea-cliffs to either side of the point run basically straight from north-west to south-east.

It was a fun trip, and is the farthest I've gone yet for drone flying (it's about 40 minutes out from Hilo). Interestingly, while my original intent with getting a drone was simply getting aerial photos and videos, I'm finding that I'm coming to enjoy the simple act of flying at least as much. I'm excited to go out and fly, even in places I've explored before or where I don't end up taking many photos. It's a new experience, but I think I finally have a proper outdoor hobby. So expect more aerial photos (and videos) in future! A hui hou!