The Art of Flying: Joanna Steidle Comes Into Her Own as a Drone Photographer

Joanna Steidle lives her life by the weather — and as first light breaks in Southampton, she is already checking the forecast.

Her day’s trajectory entirely depends on it.

If the skies are overcast, Steidle will take herself to the corn and rye fields, where the wind gusts dance through the stalks, sculpting waves of gold. But if the morning is calm, she knows the seas will be still as glass — and she heads for the beach.

Standing on the shore, she holds her drone, silently connecting with it before sending it up overhead, out across the water. Then, she focuses and looks — and hopes that luck is on her side.

Often, it is.

“The first time I ever saw a whale, honestly, my hands actually started shaking a little bit,” she recalls. “Because I was, like, I just was there with the whale. I mean, who gets to do that every day, almost?”

At age 50, Steidle’s photography career has soared to heights she never imagined when she first picked up a drone in 2015. Her work is regularly featured on The Weather Channel, WeatherNation, AccuWeather, Live Storm Chasers and News 12 Long Island, and has also appeared on Fox News, ABC, Yahoo, and more.

This summer alone, 13 of her drone videos went viral.

“I finally found my niche in life,” she says. “By the time I hit 43, I found the right spot.”

Professionally, Steidle has dabbled in graphic and web design, computer programming, bookkeeping and home automation, and even owned a music shop in Colorado before moving back to her native Southampton to eventually pursue her true passion.

It just took her three decades to get there.

“I found out years ago, and I didn’t realize this, that we each have a real gift,” she says. “We have at least one, each of us, and mine is my eyes.”

Steidle considers herself to be a pilot first and an artist second. Her interest in flying dates back to childhood, watching her grandfather build model aircrafts that he stored in his basement. She loved them, she says, and took her first pilot lesson at age 18.

“But then I went to school and I had kids,” she says. “It was a dream I had but just never fulfilled.”

A dormant piece of herself was awakened the first time she piloted a drone, she says. It was winter and she flew it all around her house, practicing drills at all hours of the night — up and down, side to side, and repeat.

“I jumped in. I was like mad lady,” she says. “I didn’t stop. I mean, I was up at three in the morning flying this thing, waking my kids up.”

In 2017, she became the first female drone pilot certified to fly under the Federal Aviation Administration’s small unmanned aircraft systems, or UAS, rule on Long Island, and “it’s just been a ride ever since,” she says.

“It’s a whole load of evolution,” she says. “I didn’t know photography, and I just did what looked good.”

What started as covering community events for free has evolved into a full-time business, which offers services to real estate agents, contractors, documentarians, and more. She is a brand ambassador for Women Who Drone and also offers private lessons as a tutor and takes pride in serving as a mentor to other female pilots.

“When I can see in somebody else’s face the same delight I had, it’s fun,” she says. “It’s really fun to watch.”

Steidle flies every single day, unless she’s sick, and takes operating a drone as seriously as piloting an aircraft. “If I haven’t gotten a good sleep, I might not fly,” she says. “A drone pilot still actually has to constrain themselves to the same physical standards of a manned aircraft pilot. You can’t take Benadryl. You’ve gotta exercise, eat healthy and sleep.”

Her artistic process has taught her patience, she says, and it forces her to open her mind to a different perspective as she searches for her shot. “It’s just a hit or miss,” she says. “I never know on any given day where I’m going to find what. You just never know what you’re going to get. It’s so wild.”

Her marine life photos and videos, which have garnered millions of views and international attention, capture sharks on the prowl and fevers of stingrays, massive schools of bunker, and whales surfacing and feeding. When she stumbles across a particularly compelling scene, a certain feeling courses through her body.

“My heart skips,” she says. “There’s been some moments where I believe I captured something that nobody else would have caught.”

Her award-winning photo “Parting Ways” is one of those moments, she says, accomplished over the span of weeks at “The Cut,” with its signature lanes of sand — some dry, others wet — and the seagulls that fly there. Early in the morning, while the shadows were long, she would visit the beach with a loaf of bread in tow, waiting for the birds overhead to come down for the scattered breadcrumbs as she sent the drone above them.

“When they were all done, they would fly away from me very low — so I said, ‘Yes, that’s what I want. I want them all in the group flying away, flying low,’” she says. “And so, I got that shot. It took me almost two weeks, almost every day, and definitely more than one loaf of bread. But now they know me. I could be a few feet away with a drone and they just don’t care. They’re like, ‘Where’s the bread?’

“That’s very special because I had the vision,” she continues. “I didn’t know exactly where it was going to go, but I knew I was going to be there until I found something great.”

The photographer’s two main drones are a DJI Mavic 3 — her workhorse, which has her zoom lens — and a DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2, but they are just part of her roster. “I’ve got a bunch in pieces,” she explains, noting the “fly, crash, rebuild” cycle that has become a fixture in her life.

“I’ve been through, like, 12 drones — a lot of drones. I made lots of mistakes,” she says. “I didn’t have any major crashes, but I crashed. I feel like you’re not really pushing yourself if you don’t crash. I really like to fly as fast as I possibly can at any given moment, which is why I’m in FPV now.”

FPV, or first person view, drones allow the pilot to see what the drone sees by transmitting a live feed to goggles, creating an immersive experience. It makes tricks like flying through tight spaces, barrel rolls and high-speed maneuvers even more possible — with a side of vertigo and nausea.

Despite that, Steidle had a DJI Avata on the way.

“I started flying the little drones with the goggles all through the playgrounds, and I’m like, ‘I can’t get over how much fun this is’ — and I’m getting another one this week,” she says, giddy. “I just can’t wait. You can hear it in my voice. It’s my everything.”

Outside of her business, flying drones feels personal for Steidle. Each one is named after someone significant to her, she says, and taking the time to connect to her drone before sending it into the air has become an important part of her routine — and her life.

“It helps me in everything,” she says of flying drones. “It opens your mind. There’s things out there we can’t see, but they still exist.”