I've always dreamt of going to North Brother Island. It was NYC's communicable disease quarantine island for decades but has been off-limits to people since the 1960's. It's now a bird sanctuary (you'll see a couple of big ones here). But have never been able to make that happen, legally or otherwise. But with my Mavic Pro I was able to do the next best thing: Fly to it!
If you wanna get to the ideal North Brother Island launch site, this is your best route.
There are so many super-low-flying helicopters around this area that I was uncomfortable really flying much. But I was mostly there for Descension, and it didn't disappoint.
Behold, Haystack Rock from the air! It's a 235-foot sea stack in Cannon Beach, Oregon which was made famous by the movie The Goonies.
Summer views over Central Park's Belvedere Castle, the Ramble, and other nearby sights.
This place is totally amazing. The black sand is often really black pebbles, which allow the crashing waves that hit the beach to vanish as soon as they appear. The stairstep rock formations are geologically rare and quite something to behold.
Designed by the Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, VIA on 57th St and the Hudson River is a striking building. I mean, I'm not convinced it's entirely beautiful, but it's definitely interesting, and because I so frequently ride past it on the Hudson River Greenway I'd long wanted to get a look at it from above.
This is the first footage I shot with my Mavic Pro. I went over to a friend's place with roof access that has proved to be a tremendously good launch site. Some of the moves are a bit rough, but I was very much still learning and hadn't dialed in the gimbal controls yet.
A couple of days before NYC's newest park opened to the public I flew over it to see what was coming. It's always FULL of people now, so enjoy this rare empty view.
Got up early one morning to shoot them demolishing the bridge. The experience was really something else. Mostly just for the sound. It was so loud, even at a great distance. Like being hit by a wall of sound — you felt it. Unfortunately no audio from the drone… And visually ti's pretty subtle. But the footage looking over the wreckage isn't so subtle.
Before they demo'd the old bridge I flew over the new one. Mostly I just like that when I take a cab to or from the airport it doesn't feel like I'm cheating death if I make it from Queens to Brooklyn without dying.
One of my favorite parts of Queens, Astoria Park under the RFK and Hells Gate Bridges.
I'd always wanted to fly through a window. But the Mavic Pro is just big enough to make that not seem viable. When the Mavic Air came out I jumped at it for the smaller size and novel new intelligent camera tricks. With it's smaller size and obstacle avoidance turned off, I got this pretty pleasing take of flying through the window, but it's cut short because moments after getting outside, it got super confused and I couldn't control it much anymore and had to run outside and land it.
I only got to test the Mavic Air for two weeks to see whether or not it was a suitable replacement for my Mavic Pro. The weather was predictably lousy the entire time, but one morning when it wasn't raining I went out to give it a try. I was rather disappointed by the amount of drift, which you can see here when I'm trying to fly straight down the street and it keeps veering off. Also, it dropped signal if I got more than a block away. Ultimately as beautiful as the footage was and as small as the device was, I determined it wasn't going to cut it, and returned it.
When I was back home I made a point of shooting some footage of downtown.
We called it BTWHSPVA or "Arts Magnet", but now they call it Booker T. That's kinda the least of the changes it experienced in the 20 years since my class graduated.
How much is visible depends on the tide, but not much of the Yellow is still around at this point.