The other day, someone saw one of my drone videos and said, “That looks like a foreign country!” I had to smile because the video wasn’t from some distant country—it was taken right here, sweet Trinidad and Tobago. The video in question was this one.
And that got me thinking: how many of us truly see and appreciate the beauty of where we live?
It’s easy to overlook familiar places. The streets we drive on every day, the hills in the distance, the coastline we pass by—they all blend into the background of our routines. There is an old quote "familiarity breeds contempt", for this situation I would say " familiarity steals wonder" just because something is familiar doesn’t mean it isn’t remarkable. Sometimes, the problem isn’t that a place lacks beauty—it’s that we’ve never looked at it from the right angle.
A drone shot can make an everyday scene look extraordinary, not because the place has changed, but because the our perspective has. From above, the patterns in the land emerge, the coastline stretches endlessly, the city looks alive in a whole new way. And it makes you wonder: What else have I been overlooking?
This isn’t just about photography. It’s about how we see the world around us. Maybe if we took a step back—literally or figuratively—we’d realize that the places we take for granted are just as breathtaking as the ones we dream of visiting. Maybe the beauty we’re looking for has been right here all along.
Because at the end of the day, The only thing you sometimes have control over is perspective.