Capturing the Contours of Texas Hill Country Ranches

Even though it’s called the Texas Hill Country, capturing the true contours and scale of the land in photos and video can be surprisingly challenging. The rolling terrain, long ridge lines, and wide valleys that make this region beautiful often flatten out in traditional aerial images.

To help solve that problem, we recently added a new drone to the Ranch Drone fleet — the DJI Mavic 4 Pro. Unfortunately, drones like this are currently facing potential bans in the U.S. due to government efforts to restrict Chinese-made drones while American manufacturers try to catch up. Trust me, the moment an American drone company releases a photographic drone that can compete with DJI, I’ll be first in line.

In the meantime, the Mavic 4 Pro is an incredible tool. Its Hasselblad camera system with three lenses — 28mm, 70mm, and 168mm — allows us to capture images that simply weren’t possible with earlier drones. The camera also shoots 6K video in uncompressed 10-bit color, producing footage so good that I recently used it as a secondary camera on a documentary shoot, mounted on a specialized tripod.

One of the most effective ways to show the natural contours of ranch land is by using a long zoom lens while flying the drone far from the subject. For example, if a home sits on a hill overlooking a valley, the drone may be positioned 3,000 feet away and more than half a mile from the property, zoomed in so the house fills the frame. This technique compresses the landscape and magnifies the background, revealing layers of hills and valleys that would otherwise appear flat.

When combined with AI tracking and a slow one-mile circular flight path around the home, the result can be stunning — dramatic imagery that truly shows how the land sits in the landscape.

It’s just one of the ways Ranch Drone continues to push aerial photography to better showcase the beauty and scale of Texas ranch properties.