Come fly with me: drones raise bar for photography

As darkness falls, a drone ascends slowly, its rotors whirring like the wings of a hummingbird. It begins roving over high-rises, bridges, expressways and weaves its way through dazzling modern and ancient architecture in downtown Wuxi of East China's Jiangsu province.

This is how Wu Yidi spent his nights ahead of this past Spring Festival in February, testing out his new toy — a DJI Mavic 3 consumer drone —using the 4G network in his hometown.

"I just couldn't wait to have a go at its enhanced image transmission, which is said to have higher quality and stability," Wu told China Daily in a recent interview. "And of course I need the signals by my side."

The trial flights were far from failure. In fact, the 28-year-old amateur pilot was enthralled by the much-improved picture quality, which led to him making a popular drone video.

The decisive moment came on Jan 30, when Wu steered the 900-gram vehicle along the route of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and a string of waterways downtown.

In a 28-minute flight covering roughly 19.7 kilometers, the drone shot stunning footage from a new perspective, most prominently the city's varied bridges spanning multiple eras and architectural styles.

"I chose bridges mainly because there was nothing blocking them," Wu said."I think it is a great medium to connect the footage and form a complete story."

Wu edited that raw footage into a five-minute video and uploaded it to Bilibili on Feb 3. The site is an online video-sharing platform popular among younger generations.