Recap: Russell Brown’s Top Gun Flight Training at Photoshop World

Last week I had the opportunity to feed my obsession with aerial photography and participate in Russell Brown’s Top Gun Flight Training workshop at Photoshop World, and it was an awesome experience! Many thanks to Russell for putting together this incredible workshop. There’s nothing like a giant room full of RC photography enthusiasts, with multiple copters flying around all over the place, coupled with a wealth of Photoshop and video processing knowledge (links below for all of this content)!

There are few places that have as dramatic architecture and landscape as Vegas, and this also made for some great photos.

Aerial shot over the Luxor and Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas
Aerial shot over the Luxor and Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas

The day started with an intro from DJI, who sponsored the event and donated copters for workshop participants to use.  If you haven’t seen their copters/footage yet, you should check out the short video below to see what’s possible with today’s radio controlled aircraft.

Next, we broke off into teams to cover basic flight training principles… everything from safety (the most important thing of all), basic takeoff and landing procedures, flight modes and capabilities, to techniques for panoramas and dramatic shots.

Once everyone had a chance to fly the copters and get acclimated, we regrouped to learn how to work with your aerial footage. Do not miss the videos from Russell Brown and Colin Smith in the links below. These are must-watch content for any aerial photographer, cinematographer, or GoPro enthusiast and contain a wealth of information!

Videos from Russell Brown:

Videos from Colin Smith:

Finally, the day ended with a flying competition… The person who could fly through 4 hula hoops without knocking anything over, without crashing, and land in a controlled fashion walked home with a brand new DJI Phantom, and the winner did it in 26 seconds! … This was not an easy task.

Some additional photos from the event…

Barry Blanchard shows us a DJI S800 Octo-rotor setup
Barry Blanchard shows us a DJI S800 Octo-rotor copter
DJI Phantoms awaiting flight
DJI Phantoms awaiting flight
Russell Brown kicks things off
Russell Brown kicks things off
Flight training underway
Flight training underway
Flight trainers getting ready (photo credit Sean Teegarden and Randy Jay Braun)
Flight trainers getting briefed (photo credit Sean Teegarden and Randy Jay Braun).  In this photo: Aaron Grimes, Ben Grimes, me, Russell Brown, Barry Blanchard, Jesse Zibble, Randy Jay Braun, Paul Pan, Steve Snell

To finish things off, an amazing video from the Grimes brothers, filmed entirely with a DJI Phantom and GoPro:

All of this made possible with Adobe Creative Cloud. Want to get the most out of your aerial footage?  Then become a member today!