Thanks Jeffrey - there were more treetops behind me since this view overlooks the Columbia River and the ground drops off looking in this direction. I shot this from directly overhead of my house instead of backing up to get more tree tops since I didn't really want to fly anywhere and then have to find my way back. Other shots I took that evening show lots more trees but not the great color show.
Thanks Ben - Mother Nature gets the credit for the color show. I just fly up and shoot them
Alan, I love the red clouds, the top half is what we will get this week: huge vapour saturated storm clouds on the way.
Thanks Jim - Very much an amazing sunset. Even more amazing since it wasn't visible from the ground at all beyond a bit of a tint in the fog. Flying anywhere away from where I was would immediately put you afoul of VLOS flight rules. Visibility straight up was OK but from the ground even moving 1-200' in any direction would be beyond visibility. You would have neither a clear view of the drone or situational awareness of what is going on around the drone since you wouldn't be able see that airspace from the launch point. This is a topic that generates some rather spirited discussions on the Mavic Pilots Forum.
Thanks Oliver - not a lot of opportunities for sunsets like this right now. I might get a sunrise tomorrow (rain by sunset) and then the forecast is rain every day for the next two weeks up here.
Thanks Jeffrey - I consider that a compliment since my goal with a drone is to simply have another place to put a tripod to shoot. When I look at my flight logs on AirData they all look similar in that I go to some spot in the sky and then just sit there shooting in all directions which is exactly what I do when I spread out my tripod legs on the ground in the first place. This is the flight log for this particular sunset as shown on a map. Each triangle represents a single image capture with the wide part showing the gimbal heading for the shot.
That makes sense with the fog. As I have mentioned before the Mini 2, I can't see it once it gets about 100 feet away, much less the 5 mile range or whatever it is. And in practicality I think about 1 mile is the most I can get before there are transmission errors anyway. But typically, even if I can't see the drone anymore, say in the 800 to 1000 foot distance away, I can see the area around it, back to that situational awareness. If a helicopter or a low flying airplane was coming in, I could spot it and immediately lower the altitude of my drone. Even if I can't directly see my drone anymore, I have an idea usually where it is, though there are times one can lose where exactly it is because 1 hill starts to look like another hill. I will have a general idea, but not know exactly. With fog, thinking about it, I totally get that you wouldn't be able really know where it was as the ground would look way to similar, just more fog.
The fog in this case was about 75' from ground level where I live. Out in the middle of the Columbia River in the middle of this scene it would be around 300' since the river is at sea level. I always track elevation on launch as I need about 80' to clear the trees around the block I live on. There are some taller than that but not right near my house.