TWiP Talks 28: Drones! State of the Union

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 an award-winning photographer, technologist, drone expert, and author.

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, e.g., the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_D-W8ZVPZ8,DEFCON, NASA UTM, http://www.photoshelter.com/luminance/videos/cheng, Photographers@Google, CES, SXSW, AsiaD, http://creativemornings.com/talks/eric-cheng/1, Tested.com’s Live Show, 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. In previous careers, Eric was Director of Aerial Imaging at ​DJI / General Manager of DJI’s SF Bay Area office and Director of Photography at ​Lytro.

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.

In October 2015, Peachpit published Eric’s first book, ​http://aerialphotographybook.com/. Eric’s photography can be found at http://echengphoto.com.

Eric lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Pam, and baby son, Mako.