Video Description:

There’s something about Allison Lake (just outside of the town of Coleman in Alberta) that makes it always seem so peaceful. On the evening that I shot this video of my sister, Jordyn, kayaking on the lake, there was hardly any wind, and as it was September, there were hardly any people either.

The video was shot with a DJI Phantom 4 quadcopter and the great thing about it is that it gives you an entirely different perspective. I’ve been to Allison Lake more times that I can remember as I grew up in this area, but I’ve never seen it from the air before and the colour and clarity of the water looking directly down into it from above was awesome. There are a lot of old trees and stumps that are hard to see from the shore, but are perfectly visible from above.

Jordyn does a great job of making the paddling look fun and calming, even though I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. Between the drone constantly flying overtop of her head, and me yelling out to her from the shore telling her which way to turn and when to paddle, I’m confident that it wasn’t as peaceful as she makes it look. It was also kind of a cold evening and we forgot to grab Jordyn’s spray deck for the kayak when we were getting loaded up so she ended up quite wet as well. But she’s nothing if not tough and the video wouldn’t be the same without her.

Shortly after filming this footage, Jordyn came back to the shore and we talked about another shot that we thought we could try to get. I had landed my quadcopter and put in a fresh battery and was getting ready to launch it. I had my remote controller for the drone around my neck on a lanyard and didn’t have my hands on it when a clip on the lanyard unbuckled and the remote bounced off of a rock and rolled into the lake. Not only did the remote have a large crack in the back from hitting the rock, it was also completely filled with water when I was able to pull it out of the lake. So, needless to say, I think this might be the sinlge most expensive video that I’ve made yet.