Nick Burnham: Taking off is fairly easy, and I was able to get some brilliant footage of the boat under way. All that remained was to land it…
Over a decade ago, I entered the scary world of self employment. Like any business, some ideas worked and some didn’t. I had a brilliant idea for syndicating boat test articles. It made no sense, I reasoned, for magazines in different countries to each send one person to do a review when I could write and photograph a boat test and sell it as a complete package worldwide for translation. I’d sell it for a third of the normal cost but to ten magazines, earning three times as much. Brilliant! I spent months collating and talking to boat magazine editors around the globe, all of whom were hugely enthusiastic and I even had a little success, with tests published in Japan, Italy, America and more. But ultimately the enthusiasm wasn’t matched by enough regular takers.
Another grand scheme was photography. If I could supply words and pictures, I’d be hot property (almost no one did this). I invested in professional camera equipment and training, got myself to a commercial standard and on this occasion was proven correct. It was a successful formula.
My next cunning scheme was aerial photography. Get proficient and it would be a goldmine! Well, that was the theory. The first obstacle was the frankly absurd level of qualification needed to fly a drone commercially at the time. That hurdle cleared and a suitable drone purchased (and christened Biggles) it was time to fly. Operating off land was always flawless. From a boat however... Every time, something seemed to go wrong, which was nail-biting with almost £2,000 worth of equipment aloft! I never did become sufficiently confident to get serious about marine drone photography, and with my next scheme, YouTube, going well, the drone was grounded. Until recently...
