One of my favorite places to explore photographically are the mancos shale badlands in central Utah in the USA. I usually spend several weeks there every year in the fall, hiking and exploring to take advantage of cooler weather and colorful fall foliage. This trip was my second with my Mavic 2 Pro and I knew this region would be rich with new photographic opportunities from this high vantage point. Travel in this area is tricky due to the clay roadbeds and since it is very remote, the weather is an important planning factor in any exploration here. The roads can easily be impassable for days after a heavy rain and I never venture many miles into the backcountry if the weather forecast is stormy.

I was in a very remote part of the region when I saw a vast area of shale ridges stretching away and so put my drone up for a look. The ridges look very different from directly above and the patterns were endless. I flew about a mile into these ridges until I saw patterns that intrigued me enough to stop and start composing. The sun was overhead so the light was harsh but even, so I thought that this would be best suited to a black and white abstract. When editing this image I decided to make an image dominated by light tones. The most difficult aspect of this type of photography is getting the lines and overall balance to be just right in the composition.