Location
My latest meetup with the Jersey Droners was at an abandoned coal power plant on the Hudson River in Yonkers, NY. The days are getting longer, so we met up at 5:30 am. It was early, and it was more than an hour’s drive over the George Washington Bridge. But it was all worth it to make this video. This might be my favorite video so far.
This video provides views of the power plant, the Hudson River, the Metro-North Railroad Commuter Train, and the cliffs from Palisades Park in NJ. In the distance, you can also see the George Washington Bridge and Manhattan Skyline when looking south. When I turned north, you can see the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.
The coal power plant was built in 1907 and sits adjacent to JFK Marina and Park. The plant was used to supply power to the Grand Central Railroad but was abandoned in the 1970s. The Lela Goren Group is the plant owner and has plans to convert it into an office center that is focused on the environment and climate change.
Flight Experience
This was the first meetup where I participated with my new DJI Air 2s. I was always out-classed flying my Mini at the Jersey Droner Meetups. But now I have a drone that is on par with the other drones in the group.
I am still learning the flight and camera settings with the Air 2s. I don’t plan to go into that for this post, but I will be posting more on that soon. What I can tell you is that I love this new drone.
This drone is bigger, so it is easier to see. The LED lights make it easier to spot in low-light as the sun comes up. I did not realize how big of a difference it made until I participated in this meetup. There was a lot of traffic in the sky, but I was clearly able to see my drone in relation to the others.
I would have loved to have captured some more closeups of the building, but I did not have much time. I had to get back to Old Bridge for other commitments I had. So most of the clips in this video are a bit distant from the power plant.
On a sad note, a Jersey Droner hit one of the stacks on the power plant with his Mavic 2 Pro. The drone plummeted to the roof and could not be recovered. That is always a fear with flying these drones. There is risk involved, and you need to be careful. But even when you are careful, you can still hit a bird or have technology failure.
Editing
This video was edited using Final Cut on my MacBook Pro. While I was editing the video, I went for an eerie feel. I used a glitch transition effect throughout the video. The glitch transitions are available at motionarray.com. I don’t often use many transition effects in my videos, but the building was creepy, and it fit the part. So in this video, I made generous usage of transition effects.
I hope you enjoy this abandoned coal power plant drone video.
Update: I got some feedback from a few people who said they did not like the glitch effect that I used. It was a creative decision on my part. However, I uploaded a second video without the effect as a point of comparison. You can watch the comparison video below. Which do you like better? The one with the transition effects or the one without?
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