To find out what inspires their interest in UAS and attracts the Advisory Board Members to support Drone World Expo, we scheduled a series of exclusive interviews. Our seventh interviewee is Eric Cheng Director of Aerial Imaging at DJI
Cheng is a frequent public speaker, and has given seminars and lectures internationally at events including TEDx, the Churchill Club, Photoshelter Luminance, CES, SXSW, and AsiaD.Cheng earned his Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science at Stanford University. He is also an accomplished diver and cellist, and also runs Skypixel.org, an informative blog focused on aerial camera technology, and Wetpixel.com, the leading underwater photography community on the web.
Question: Eric, after your internship at Apple, you started out as a software engineer, developing photography on the side. At what stage did you realise that you could make a career in this highly competitive area?
Answer: I did start out as a software engineer, and I really enjoyed being around smart people and solving problems. But I realized after a few years that I didn’t really care about enterprise software, and that I needed to find something more fulfilling at a fundamental level. I was not yet an accomplished photographer when I left the software industry, but knew that I had an extreme interest in photography and marine life. Through a series of fortunate events and a lot of time in the water, I sort of fell into the photography industry and realized that it had suddenly become my career. But I’m grateful and glad that I have a technical background because it means that there is never anything technical that is in the way of creativity.
Question: With your current roles at DJI and Wetpixel, do you still find time for photography?
Answer: It’s a hard balance to achieve. Before we had our new baby, who is now about 6 months old, I had enough time for creative photography even while fulfilling my job roles at both DJI and Wetpixel (and it helps that both of my roles actually involve being a leader in creative thinking). But as a new parent, I’ve found that it is difficult to get out to shoot, and think that I’m going to have to start scheduling time for photography. It won’t be the same—a lot of what drove me was having the freedom to explore a path until I found out what was at the end, which requires flexibility in schedule. Going forward, I’m going to have to be more adaptive.
Question: Can you tell us a bit more about your role at DJI – what does the Director of Aerial Imaging do…?
Answer: I am asked this question a lot! My role at DJI is really one leading a small startup within a larger organization. I’m on the front lines with our users, both in the consumer and commercial spaces, soaking up how people use aerial cameras and feeding that intelligence back into the organization. I’m also frequently pushing the envelopes of what can be done with our platforms and helping to shape what ends up in product. As an example, I started live broadcasting tests from drones early on, figuring out how it might be done, which eventually led to the integration of YouTube Live into our products. I’m sort of the “ultimate user” for the company, but I also manage the San Francisco office, which involves more mundane tasks like making sure the printer is always working.
Question: What do you see as being the advantage(s) of using drones for aerial photography ?
Answer: Fundamentally, drones are just arbitrary placement and movement platforms for physical objects. The first useful physical object in the civilian drone ecosystem happens to be a camera. The advantages are hard to overstate: it’s now possible to position a camera arbitrarily in space, and to have it move at a user’s command. Another advantage that shouldn’t be ignored is that drones are robots that move in space, which means that they can move autonomously. It won’t be long before a drone can move a camera more skillfully than a human can, and that will be a huge shift for the consumer world. In the professional filmmaking world, robots already control cameras a large percentage of the time
Question: How do you rate the FAA’s approach to integrating UAS operations into the NAS …? Are they being too cautious ?
Answer: We are definitely suffering from a slower pace of regulation here in the USA. When I look at all the ways UAS are being used in Europe and Asia in official capacities, I definitely feel like we’re missing out because regulations here haven’t been finalized. I don’t think the FAA is being too cautious, but I do feel like policy could be moving a lot faster, and there are things that definitely don’t make sense in the proposed rules. For example, having a single category between 0-55 lbs makes no sense whatsoever, and a “micro” category should definitely exist. Would the FAA really prevent a 1-ounce quadcopter from conducting commercial operations on the basis that it is unsafe for unregulated use in the first 400-500’ of the NAS? In general lawmaking, both federal and regional, I’d also like to see fundamental issues being addressed, like privacy and safety, instead of reactionary policies aimed directly at drones.
Question: There’s been an explosion of interest in exhibitions and conferences about UAS in the USA this year. Why did you choose to support Drone World Expo?
Answer: I chose Drone World Expo because it was focused and organized from the very beginning, with an insightful Board of Advisors involved in helping to make it a great conference about drones.
Photo Credit : Ragnar Sigurdsson
Footnote:
Eric is on the advisory board of U.S. Association of Unmanned Aerial Videographers (UAVUS), Drone World Expo (DWE), and UAViators Humanitarian UAV Network, and is a mentor at Startupbootcamp.
Eric’s photography can be found here.
[UAS Vision is an Official Media Partner for Drone World Expo – Ed.]