Late in the fall of 2011 I was laying on a couch in my living room on a Sunday afternoon paging through an issue of Wired. Vividly I recall turning to a page about a French company named Parrot that had created a remote controlled Drone with a built in camera. The next day I had one on the way to Alexandria.

Prior to viewing the Wired article my only solution for capturing aerial media was to go to Chandler Field and pay to go on a flightseeing tour to fly above properties. I’d open the side window and stick my camera out the window. It was very frustrating to me to have bare Lake Lots for sale that had a lot of tree coverage as it without an aerial, it was difficult for people to get a feel for the shoreline and the lot. Since that first drone, the technological advances have been on a hockey stick curve up.

The Parrot drone didn’t have a gimbal. Along with the low resolution, the results were poor because of lack of stabilization but at the time it still was pretty amazing. These memories came to me this morning as I was searching my Photo archives and came across photos I took of land at Lake Irene from an airplane. A few of the lake lots are currently for sale and if you are familiar with Irene, you may find them interesting. The photos are from 2006 and you will see the old road that was lakeside and the new road that was added to replace it. At the time of the photo the new NW Irene Road wasn’t paved like it is now. Here are the photos from my old school method.