DJI Wookong M Rievaulx Abbey

The weather on Monday was perfect, probably the best it's been all winter in terms of aerial photography, in fact any photography really. The air was totally still and the light was amazing, so I decided to go and film something spectacular.

Rievaulx Abbey is in a deep valley on the edge of the North York Moors, about 25 miles north of where I live in York. I went there once on a school trip when I was 7 or 8, so had a vague memory of it being pretty impressive. However, when I got there on the crisp, frosty Monday this week I was blown away by it.

Rievaulx Abbey is massive. You can see from the aerial video how large the place is in ruins, so the abbey must have been enormous when it was complete. In fact I have been told that Rievaulx Abbey is the most complete abbey in England from the Reformation, that is when King Henry VIII decided to make his own version of Christianity and dismantle many of England's large abbeys and churches, sometimes using the stones to build his own palaces and buildings.

The DJI Wookong M on my Hexa2 frame flew faultlessly, I really could not have asked for a better machine to film such a magnificent piece of medieval architecture. Some of the shots are so smooth, I think, that it looks like the camera is floating under a balloon.

I would say that this is one of my favourite aerial photography shoots ever.

It is also the longest aerial video movies I've made so far, because there was so much to take in and I didn't want to leave too much out.

I went through five batteries filming Rievaulx Abbey, 3 x 3900mah 4s and 2 x 5000mah 4s. I should point out that the batteries did not last as long as usual because of the low temperature, I think it was about -2 celsius, so this is something to consider. If you're out filming in the cold, try and keep your batteries warm before you use them to get longer flight times.