Upper Truckee Meadow

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Just downstream from the waterfall I wrote about in my last post, is a large meadow where the Upper Truckee can roam after passing through a road culvert into Christmas Valley.

After photographing the waterfall, this meadow was next on my “bucket list” of favorite places to photograph.

The photograph above is actually a compound image, created from 279 images taken at 200 feet. I used an app called Drone Deploy to layout the waypoints or path the drone would fly, and images were then taken autonomously throughout the flight (although the drone is flying the programmed path, I still have full control of the drone and can quickly maneuver it in any direction if needed). To be able to fly autonomously, the drone needs to receive GPS location data from at least 10 of the 24 orbiting GPS satellites. Because of the steep walls of Christmas Valley, I had to try several different take-off locations away from trees until I found a spot where I had a view of the necessary 10 satellites.

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One challenge for photographing this meadow from the air is the many people recreating in and near it. From fishermen to birders, mountain bikers, and rock climbers, the parking areas near the meadow are almost always full. Although there are longer shadows earlier in the day, I decided that early on a weekday would have the highest chances of finding the meadow empty of people.

At 8:53 am on Monday, July 13th, I took off and the drone began its autonomous flight. From my vantage point in the South West corner of the meadow I watched for any low-flying aircraft or people entering the meadow which would require aborting the flight. After 15 minutes of flight, the drone took the final photo (looking south), and returned to the landing pad.

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Once home, I uploaded the images to WebODM.net, which is a cloud instance of Open Drone Map, an open source software project which can stitch the hundreds of images taken into a top-down “birds-eye view” photo (orthomosaic is the technical term). My goal is to refly this meadow throughout the year, using boulders as landmarks, to see how much seasonal flows change the height and width of the river. Exposed banks will change with how much water is flowing, and over the years I expect to see the path of the river change as banks erode and change.

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For me, the exciting part of capturing these images is the potential for seeing small changes over time. In my next post I will be exploring how drones can be used to visualize these changes by demonstrating what pre & post photos of a tree removal project look like.

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Using Drones to Visualize Changes in a Landscape

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Upper Truckee Waterfall