Well it is wedding season. Time to catch up with old friends and family, celebrate the newlyweds and dance the night away. A few weeks ago, my wife’s cousin was centre-stage for his wedding. Indian weddings are renowned for their many events (we went to all 6, yes SIX, over two weekends) and it was truly beautiful. The sun was out, the colours were vibrant and the mood was exhilarating. Yet out of those six events, one sticks out the most…the civil registry (event number 3 or was it 4???)
Now it has become custom for the bride and groom to adopt the western culture associated with a civil registry – a white dress for the bride and morning suits for the groom – and this was no exception. Held in an amazing secluded manor, used as a backdrop to several films, the couple were officially married. Sure enough the ceremony itself was quite memorable but it was after that really caught my attention…and I wasn’t the only one.
As the bride and groom exited to a shower of bubbles (confetti was banned on the estate) and much clapping and cheering, in the distance we began to hear the whizzing of propellers. Then seconds later over a well-groomed towering 10 foot hedge came a drone with red and greed LED lights flashing away and a micro camera fastened to the underside.
There was a huge gasp as the drone swung over us from left to right. In an instant all eyes on the newlyweds moved skyward and for some odd reason we all began to wave at this robotic machine. The operator was nowhere to be seen and the drone began to circle and rise and fall with incredible delicacy.
I began to scan the street-level for the operator and soon I found him about 50 metres away. Dressed in all black, he held a massive remote control with a sun-visor clipped to the top. As I watched him I realised his eyes were not on the drone hovering above our heads, which is where I thought they should be if he wanted to ensure complete control, but in fact they were fixed on whatever his sun-visor was hiding.
I returned to the spectacle out of respect but all my thoughts were on the controller. As the drone swayed from left to right and back again, it began to ascend at some pace and then disappear over the estate out of sight. I knew at this point that even the controller couldn’t maintain eye contact with it so he must be accessing the camera on the drone itself.
The talk was of the drone and what amazing pictures and views it must have caught. I saw the photographer and wondered if he thought his days were numbered. As I walked the grounds, I saw the controller with a colleague and the drone at their feet. The remote control was lying on the floor and as I approached it all became clear. The sun-visor on top of the remote control was covering a smartphone, an iPhone 6 Plus to be precise.
A quick chat with the owner and he explained that the camera on the drone had an app which was easily downloaded to this iPhone. Whilst the camera itself had stored all the images and footage, the app provided a direct link to what was being seen. That was why he never needed to maintain eye contact with the drone itself.
A quick search on the Amazon app, I found a comparable product for just under £800 – HD camera included! It was another reminder of how mobile apps are becoming an integral part of everyday life and how they are enhancing experiences and memories. The future of wedding photography was here.