Drones! State of the Union
13http://www.thisweekinphoto.com - In this interview, I sit down with UAV/Drone pioneer Eric Cheng. We discuss the rapid pace of drone evolution, and the current state of the industry. We also discuss where all of this might be going in the not-so-distant future, both in terms of technology as well as the unfolding legalities.
Eric Cheng is a technologist and award-winning photographer, and was formerly the Director of Aerial Imaging and General Manager of the San Francisco office at DJI, the creators of the popular Phantom aerial-imaging quadcopter.
Throughout his career, Eric has straddled passions for photography, entrepreneurship, technology and communication. His work as a photographer has been featured at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum and in many media outlets including Wired, Outdoor Photographer, Popular Photography, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Make, ABC, Good Morning America, CBS, CNN and others.
His video work has been shown on the Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, and on virtually every news network around the world. He leads regular photography expeditions and workshops around the world, and has given seminars and lectures internationally at events including TEDx, DEFCON, NASA UTM, Luminance, Photographers@Google, CES, SXSW, AsiaD, Creative Mornings, DEMA, and others.
Caught between technical and creative pursuits, Eric holds bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science from Stanford University, where he also studied classical cello performance. He publishes Wetpixel.com, the leading underwater-photography community on the web, and writes about his aerial-imaging pursuits at skypixel.org.
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 is also a Field Associate with the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, California.
Eric’s photography can be found at http://echengphoto.com.