The Drone Photographer

Steve is the kind of drone operator that looked at a mosquito and asked, why are they having all the fun? He too could emit an irritating noise, invade people’s personal space and have the power to decimate defenceless villages in developing nations, if he so wished. 

For now, the only war he is waging is a campaign of carpet-bombing social media with endless drone footage. Naturally, he’s destroyed many a person’s sense of serenity in the process. Just collateral damage to a man like Steve. 

His most recent mission was a long weekend down south. He convinced his young family to accompany him under the ruse of a fun-packed holiday. In reality, it consisted mostly of his wife & kids sitting on park benches while Steve recorded unimpressive aerial footage. 

He didn’t speak to his misso for 36 consecutive hours when she suggested his footage might be a bit better if he took a few photography classes. Absolute sacrilege, drone ownership was the only qualification he needed to win the next Hasselblad. 

However, it was long before the tides turned on that tiff as Steve managed to crash his drone near a group of young girls sunbaking after hovering for a suspicious amount of time. A group of angry dads waited at the crash site for Steve to retrieve his drone. 

It gets pretty heated as one of the dads’ demands to know why he was hovering over his daughter. Steve maintains he was there to get the perfect angle for a set of waves coming in. 

Steve feels aggrieved by the public humiliation – how is he expected to ascertain age from the skies? Alas, he was now the R Kelly of drone photography and his wife is shocked that he believed that excuse would fly. 

To smooth things over, Steve decides to treat his family to a 45minute long, poorly edited video of the footage he took of the day. He adds an inspirational instrumental track over the top and proceeds to watch with the intensity of Lleyton Hewitt watching the replay of 2001 US Open.

It would’ve been easier to watch an SBS late night movie with your grandma in the room than to nod along politely as Steve banged on about his technical brilliance. After the premiere, he waits for a standing ovation.

“Good to see you edited out those girls you were perving on, Steve, is that why you really fly the drone?”

Steve storms out of the room. How could this iPhone pleb possibly understand the pursuit of drone photography excellence? He decides to finish off his night by revisiting some footage he took of a pool party down the road from him last month. 

No ambiguity there. Those girls must’ve been old enough, they were drinking beers. Checkmate, haters. 

Documenting the Human Zoo is thirsty work, so if you enjoyed what you read how about buying Belle a beer, ay?

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