I’ve bought several of his shots through the years. He nailed this one

The pictures people have taken with there drones and what Pete has taken, No comparison. Pete's photos on the metal are the only way to go!!! If you want quality photos

No doubt, but Pete is not up here in Michigan and to have a custom helicopter shoot would be crazy expensive. Poker run photos often have messed up looking water from the other boats.

That's an awesome shot but I would remove the shadow from the top right corner and the out of place water spray from the top left.

I am in Michigan throughout the summer, at Boyne Thunder, and Rock the Coast, Skaterfest. as well as the races in the michigan area. are Helicopters expensive? yes. depending on the shoot you want to do you get five or six of you buddies to bring their boat and it makes a shoot much more reasonable in price.

Bottom line: You get what you pay for. Drones have some great applications, such as overviews, in powerboat photography. Having lost one dear photographer friend to a helicopter crash during a shoot and almost losing another twice (Pete Boden), I appreciate their safety advantage.

But there is no contest when it comes to running shots captured by a pro photographer in a helicopter with an experienced pilot (and flying for boat shoots is a specific skill set) and a drone. Being a skilled drone pilot doesn't also make you a skilled photographer. Nor can a drone camera, at least to my knowledge, can't change lenses in flight. I have looked at, chosen, edited, color-corrected and cropped tens (maybe hundreds, I don't know) of thousands of digital high-performance boat photos and I've yet to see great running shots captured by drone.

That said, it takes more than a camera and a helicopter to capture great images of boats in action. There's lots and lots of low-quality, overpriced junk out there. For the really good stuff, you need a skilled photographer and pilot, preferably who have worked together.

As described above, Pete's solution is a good one—and cost effective.

Just to let you know in case you are at a run that Pete is at. I bought a print on metal from him and also bought the e-file. It was cheaper than what Boat pics wanted but I was on a run that Pete was shooting.

The boat pic shots came from a group of nine of us they were shooting so that may have increased the price but.
The shots Boat pic sent were not bad but the price was over the top. I think Pete's price was very fair and the print on metal looks killer.
Here is the shot I bought from Pete, not sure how much editing was done. This is not the full size file, OSO will not let me load it.

They were a part of lake Cumberland the first year my dad ever went. I thought it would be fun for him to get in the action and registered his 21’ sea ray and we did the first leg of the run. Got a call about a month later from someone who sounded like a very heavy smoker at boat pix that said they had a dozen or so photos of us and wanted to know if we were interested. I was thinking it would be a good Christmas present for him so said please send me over the proofs. Was told it would be a week or two as they were getting everything sorted out from a couple of poker runs. After about a month I call in, was told that they needed registration numbers to know which boat we were in (I guess the poker run number wasn’t how they sorted them even though most boats in the run didn’t have registration numbers). So I take time to drive 40 minutes to storage, fight with his full mooring cover, get the numbers, call in and be told they didn’t take any pictures. Ask the same person I spoke to a month or whatever prior about the phone call and was told that there was no way they would have made that phone call. Christmas morning after exchanging gifts I was telling my dad the story, he laughed and said here’s the voicemail that he had received from the same person saying that they had pictures of his boat at the event. He just never found the time to call them back.

Just a joke.

Pete you forgot the Exotic Run!

drones are the future...period