Drone travel

Forget the selfie! Here comes the #dronies

The term “selfie” has been a part of the international vocabulary for a decade now. These self portraits – usually taken with a digital camera or camera phone – are an important part of the holiday experience. Not least when you want to document your travels to spectacular places in Norway.

Now, the selfie is accompanied by another word, as the sale of drones is increasing dramatically in Norway as well as the rest of the world. A dronie is, as you may have guessed, a kind of selfie – or a video – taken with a camera connected to a drone.

Several professional companies in Norway are now offering drone videos as part of the package. The Brazilian Francisco Mattos, based and working out of Longyearbyen on Svalbard, is one of them.

Recently, he gave an interview to the news agency Reuters on how he works (see the video below):

“Out here, the mountains are so huge that it can be hard to gain perspective before you see it from above”, Mattos says to Reuters.

One of the most popular commercials from Norway in the last few years was made using a drone, by the airline Emirates. It’s been seen more than 330 000 times on Youtube:

The images in the video was captured by the drone photographer Kai Jonny Thue Venøy, who offers the following explanation why the drones are such useful tools for making good travel videos:

“You gain new perspectives and possibilities for recording videos from places that used to be inaccessible. Indeed, ten years ago you could record from airplanes or helicopters, but a drone can shift from a high to low altitudes, you could fly in narrow spaces, through forests or just about anywhere”, Thue Venøy says.

You don’t need a licence to operate a drone privately in Norway, for vehicles up to 2,5 kilos, but for commercial use you have to report the use to to the country’s Civil Aviation Authority.

For heavier and faster vehicles, however, you will need a license.

Here are some of the most popular videos from Norway, made using drones: