The top10 instagram drone heroes of my personal drone heroes
©auro.aus

The top10 instagram drone heroes of my personal drone heroes

This is a follow-up piece of my previous blog where I talked about my personal drone heroes on Instagram. Now after publishing my blog, I reached out to my heroes and asked them who their favorite drone account was, aka. their drone hero!

So today I want to share what I’ve learned so far. 7 out my 10 heroes actually replied and 5/10 were kind enough to share with me their personal favorite on Instagram right now. This is a fellow drone account from whom they have gotten inspiration, sometimes feedback or in some cases it’s just admiration for their work. (in no particular order)

Yes, even heroes need to have a hero!

1. Saltywings

Saltywings! was @boyanoo‘s first and fast reply to my question. He also named a few more, but let’s keep our focus here! “Saltywings is awesome and also one of the first“, he said. Boyanoo is a cool guy btw, have you seen his pink jacket? 😉

And from what I can tell, Saltywings is the king of blue Australian beaches.

Currently has 151k followers

2. Dan Ballard

Next hero is @danballardphotography. This is @usaid.fstop‘s top pick! Dan is definitely not the biggest account at 9k followers, but if you look at his photographs, you know why Usaid picked him. This guy has a soft, rather dark and dreamy feel to all his posts. He sure knows what he’s doing! A gallery of enormous landscapes.

Currently at 9k followers

3. Aero.aus

Jim Knight is a well known Australian drone photographer. And also @merrwatson‘s spontaneous reply to my question. “He captures the best spots in Australia and edits them to perfection, definitely inspires me!“, she kindly said. I say ‘kindly’ because I find Merr to be most warm in her Instagram approach and also DM’s.

Currently at 28k followers

4. Spathumpa

Our next hero was chosen by @vbdronography as his nr1 drone account! And I must abide, @spathumpa is really worth the look. He is also more of an artist than just a drone photographer. If you look at below image, you’ll understand why.

On a side note: Vladimir (@vbdronography) also did a top10 of his drone heroes in his story last week. He read my blog and thought the idea was very cool. High five Vlad 😉

Currently has 131k followers

5. Abstractaerialart

Our following drone hero was hand-picked by @airpixels, who first nominated himself as best drone account on Instagram. But that was not really the idea, right Tobias! 🙂

@abstractaerialart is another artist, or should I say team of artists (2 brothers according to their bio), looking for patterns in landscape, thus rendering it into art from an aerial perspective!

Currently at 24k followers

For the following part, I will cheat a bit, as only 5/10 of my heroes actually gave me a name. However while researching and talking to my heroes, I stumbled upon a few more interesting names worth mentioning. So read on and enjoy:

6. Gab Scanu

Another blue tick … but what an account. His drone photographs are just astonishing. Well worth your time checking him out. And guess what, another Australia born !! What’s up with that lads?

Btw: according to his website, this guy is only 21 years old 😉

Currently at 351k followers

7. Florian Ledoux

Florian is not your typical drone photographer. This French guy knows what the word dedication means! He went up to the Arctics with his drone to photograph wildlife and – damn right – won some of the major drone & photography prizes in 2018.

Beautiful images, one of a kind, that is Florian:

Currently at 15k

8. Josh Burkinshaw

Josh is another Australian to make the list. Is it me? Or is there some sort of secret drone cult going on there? 🙂 Well this only makes me wanna visit Australia even more, woehoew, see you in 6 months guys!!

Josh has some amazing sunset captures that you just must see. Like this one for example:

Currently has 24k followers

9. Borsch

With Yura Borschev, we finally have a Russian photographer in the list. And with a name like that, you can’t be mistaken. This guy is serious. Every edit is just perfect. Just look at his beautiful tones:

Currently at 61k followers

10. Bachir Moukarzel

Posting under the name of @bachir_photo_phactory, this Lebanon born and Dubai based drone photographer has a way with light that I haven’t seen much before. There is this soft subtle touch to every photo that makes it magical for me.

See for yourself:

Currently at 43k followers

Update: I recently did a drone interview with Bachir Moukarzel, not to be missed!


That’s it for today. Hope you enjoyed the list. And discovered some new photographers to follow. I know I sure did.

Do you want to learn how to edit your photos like these guys? Go check out my new blog post with 10 basic and easy Lightroom steps.

Feel free to post your drone hero in the comments below.