Bird’s eye view
Sean Goodhart shares his tips and latest images from his ongoing personal project
Sean Goodhart (keen amateur photographer and an associate of the RP S) is somewhat of an expert when it comes to photographing the ground from above. In his series ‘Scratching the Surface’, Sean explores the human imprint and our effect on the surface of the planet, looking for interesting shapes, tones, patterns, colours and textures. Sean’s images provide visually interesting photographs to look at, but also create a discussion point about how we impact the earth. “I like to find unusual viewpoints of familiar views,” he says. “It brings me a lot of satisfaction. The images in this project are all top down, but I’m also making a lot of landscape pictures with a new dimension because of the ability to get higher.”
Sean loves the kit that comes with a photographic hobby and has had many analogue and digital cameras in his collection spanning back to as early as the 1980s. In 2018 as a Christmas present to himself, Sean invested in a DJI Mavic 2 Pro drone. “I’ve been visualising this project for a couple of years but waiting to buy the requisite
tool once the technology price versus performance got sensible. The camera on the 2 Pro is capable of proper manual control, plus has a lot of megapixels. It also packs up fairly small for travelling, which is something I do a lot of in my line work as an engineer in the energy industry.”
As well as mastering drone technology and flight techniques, Sean also takes the safety aspects that comes with flying a drone seriously. However, even when you take all the necessary precautions you can sometimes be caught out, as Sean was on one shoot. “I had checked the location was safe, published my flight to the CAA system with the Drone Safe app and was happily making my images until a low-flying stunt aeroplane came over the brow of a nearby hill… heading straight at my Mavic! It flew straight over the drone and then proceeded to do two loop-the-loops in the fields to the right of my image. I’m sure the separation between drone and the little aircraft was probably a lot more than it looked… but my heart was in my mouth for a few seconds!” seangoodhart.myportfolio.com