Barton Springs Pool · Zilker Park · Austin, TX
Took the drone out to Barton Springs last Saturday, late afternoon. The water was clear enough to see the limestone bottom from a couple hundred feet up.
That is not the usual case. Late May after a dry stretch is the small window where the pool reads green from above instead of brown. By July the algae moves in and the color shifts. Catching it clear from the air was half the reason to go up.
From this altitude you get the whole pool in one shot. A long rectangle of spring water cut into the limestone, sunbathers along the south lawn, and downtown Austin sitting right behind it. The skyline is closer than it feels on the ground. If you point the camera right, you get the springs in the foreground and the city in the same frame. That is the Austin shot in one take.
Shot on a DJI drone in 4K, stabilized in-camera. Flown FAA Part 107, since the pool sits inside a public park and there are always people in the picture. The clip above is one pass from a single hover position. The cut on Instagram is shorter. The rest of the afternoon's footage will end up cut into a few different things over the next couple of weeks.
This was not a client shoot. I went out because I had not flown Barton Springs yet and it was time to fix that. But this is the same work the drone does for apartment complexes, hotels, and event venues around Austin. A property has a story from above that you cannot tell from the ground, and a lot of operators in this city have not had theirs shot that way yet.