The People Manning the Unmanned Vehicles

Except for very specialized vehicles and missions, unmanned means only that a man, or woman, is not on board, and a photographer does a disservice to the operators if the photography doesn't encompass them.

In these images we see how focus and composition are used to create much more than a "nice" photo of a drone.

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The above image is the opener to a story in the Summer 2018 issue of Rotor magazine. In that story I look at the training side of drone operations through the experiences of four organizations. The two women, Jessica Bautista and Elizabeth Rohe, are digital journalists with the Town of Gilbert, Arizona. Though they appear clearly focused further in the article, I left them out of focus here since they are obviously connected to the drone.

By focusing beyond the student and instructor in the foreground, our attention is directed to Challenger Aerospace President LeRoy Aday and the red drone. Aday is visually smaller in this image than the other two people, and the drone is half-hidden, but we still know what I wanted us to focus on. (And I'm sorry, I don't intend to pun the word "focus" all the time — it's unintentional.)

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Camera placement and lens choice give this Mesa, Arizona, Fire Department drone great visual power but Deputy Chief Brian Kotsur, towering over it, is obviously in charge.

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And here, despite the identical relationship between operator and drone, I've taken the opposite approach to tie the pilot to the aircraft — though the latter is visually tiny, mirrored in City of Scottsdale Police Sergeant Austen George's sunglasses, that mirroring immediately tells us where the pilot's attention is focused.

Four images; four approaches showing people and their unmanned vehicles, shifting from drone-centric to pilot-centric. Those connections are important to the story, so it is important to the photography.