495 - Nissan Stadium
Today’s probably going to be the closest you’ll ever see me get to sports photography.
I have absolutely no interest in watching guys beat the shit out of each other for sports dominance. If they want to fuel their competitive spirit, they should just have straight up gladiator matches to the death like they did back in 1st Century Rome. That might be interesting.
Anyway, today’s adventure was in Nashville, Tennessee. Home of cowboys, big trucks, country music, and most importantly, hot chicken. And let me tell you, the chicken here is actually fucking hot. My taste buds were singing and singeing at the same time. It was glorious.
See, the weird thing about Nashville is that it acts like a country cartoon. You can’t help but feel like the whole city is simply playing a caricature of itself. I always knew this place was country, but I didn’t realize it was this level of country. 75% of people walking the famous “Broadway Street” during bar hours are sporting boots, hats, and flannel. Guitar players are running across bar tops, lifted trucks are blaring train horns, and neon honky-tonk signs are flicking on and off.
For our first photoshoot here, we decided to take in the city skyline from the John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge. It’s got a nice view of the river, football stadium, and skyscrapers. With those three landmarks in sight, I knew I couldn’t miss.
We showed up about 30 minutes before sunset, and started walking the bridge. The first thing I noticed was how badly I wanted to fly a drone. With the stadium nearby, I figured it could make for a cool top-down shot. Only problem was the blatant “no drones allowed sign” upon entering the bridge.
Not that that’s stopped me before. See, my general rule of thumb is if you’re not harming any animal habitats and you actually know how to fly a drone responsibly, it’s not a problem. So I loaded my Mini up and took off into the evening sky.
The stadium ended up being barely within the boundaries of my flight distance. It was simply too far and high for a Mavic Mini. You always tell this because the signal starts cutting in and out. But I kept going higher because I needed the entire frame of the stadium in the shot- for the life of me. A crop wouldn’t do. All of a sudden I was dangerously invested in something I thought I had no regard for.
As my signal almost totally went out, I managed to snag a few shots with the entire stadium in frame:
“Titan Cross Section”
Taken with DJI Mavic Mini
[ISO 100 ~ 4.49mm ~ f/2.8 ~ 1/80s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
Phew. That’s another reason I love the Mavic Mini. This drone is so ridiculously cheap that dumb stunts like this are perfectly within reason. Would I have done this with a Mavic Pro 2? Hell no. But that’s one of the benefits of owning a drone that’s sub $200.
Anyways. That’s the only photo I got, as I spent too much time flying around looking for other shots and nothing else was that interesting. Oh well. You win some, you lose some. At least I have a cool shot of a football team’s stadium I’ll never care about.
Next photoshoot I’ll be getting back to the real landscapes of the mid west. I’ve had just about enough of these selfie museum and city shoots.
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
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