Waterskiing and Wakeboarding by Drone

If you want to take a trip to hone your wakeboarding skills in an amazing tropical location, contributor Skyfie makes a compelling case for Honduras.  In the southern part of the western coast of this Central American country, the Gulf of Fonseca and a number of adjacent bays which empty into it provides an ideal shelter from the open Pacific Ocean, perfect for various aquatic activities.  As you will see from this great VLOG/aerial video, the calm waters are ideal for wakeboarding.  

If flying a first person view (FPV) racing quad over water was one of the first frontier in FPV, over-water flight while filming a wakeboarding must be the sixth or seventh.  And if there is anyone who can unlock the power of FPV drones to film an epic wakeboarding session, it's the legendary pilot JohnnyFPV.  The two-time Drone Video Award winner and Instagram phenom was able to shoot this amazing FPV video was shot on the waters around Miami, Florida, an area known to all kinds of water sports activity.

Ryan's trip to the Turks & Caicos would not have been complete without some wakeboarding, and not just any run-of-the-mill tourist wakeboarding.  No surprise then that some epic flips are involved, that's just par for the course.  If you're going to capture this on a drone though, a new stunt beckons.  Who says that the wakeboarder and the drone pilot have to be two different people?  Not Ryan, that's for sure.  See it here to believe it. 

No, the title of this video is not a misprint.  Contributor Torsteintuhaug used a DJI Phantom 4 to film a very brave wakeboarder hitting a fjord in Norway.  It goes without saying that the boarder wore a wetsuit, but still, Norway?  It doesn't matter what time of year this was taken, that water is COLD.  If they didn't have a drone to record this craziness for posterity, who would have believed them?  

Using a drone to film a waterskier is tricky, especially if the skier is operating within a wide arc.  One way to deal with this is to use multiple drones.  Contributor Elliotteiden did just that to make this epic edit of pro waterskier Corey Seamann.  The video was produced using footage taken by a DJI Phantom 3 drone operating in tandem with a Mavic Pro model, then stitched together in post-production.   

The lake district around the town of Brainerd in northern Minnesota has one of the strongest recreational boating scenes anywhere in the USA.  Not surprisingly, a lot of this revolves around waterskiing and wakeboarding, and the region abounds with competitive tournaments throughout the summer months.  In this amazing video, contributors BlazeAir and Nurkfpv collaborated with a local marine dealer and a professional wakesurfing team to create a highly entertaining promotional piece which uses both gimbal-stabilized and FPV drone footage.  

If you want to get a sense of the skill level required to be a professional wakeboarder, this video is for you.  AirVuz contributor and drone pilot Thedroneexperience aerially filmed pro wakeboarder Alejo de Palma performing all of the wakeboarding tricks you may have heard of and a few you probably hadn't.  This was shot on the Paraná River in Rosario, Argentina.  The video shows the only way to watch a performance from the 2015 World Wakeboarding champion - from the perspective of a drone! 

In this video, contributor Munoa32 manages to combine some epic wakeboarding with a spectacular location.  Shot on a beautiful lake in the Rocky Mountains of the western USA, you couldn't ask for a more amazing setting.  Munoa32's drone does a beautiful job of capturing this very talented wakeboarder doing all manner of flips and tricks, seemingly undistracted by his breathtaking surroundings.  

NurkFPV has shown that he is not afraid of putting his first person view (FPV) quads in harm's way.  It's no surprise then that he and his wakeboarder bud, Randy Kizer, took some freestyle risks in the filming of this crazy good drone video.  Flying a racing quad over water and allowing your buddy to chase you with a set of (sharp enough!) blades can be tricky biz.  Nonetheless, these guys manage to pull through the good fun with an action-packed FPV vid you just have to watch for yourself!

If you think a waterskiing team is just a collection of people who take individual runs, think again.  Contributor Matt Rafferty used a drone to film the Waterhawks waterskiing team, cutting up a lake in Iowa (in the central USA) very much as a team.  As in, all getting pulled together.  By a boat with a serious motor.  You really have to take this in from a drone to believe it.    

Lake Como is the most famous lake in Italy and one of the most well known freshwater bodies in the world.  The playground of royalty for centuries and of movie stars for decades, it makes the perfect backdrop for this epic drone video by contributor Simone Sergi.  Using some very creative editing techniques, he shows us views of the lake's beautiful shoreline intermixed with shots of some epic wakeboarding and jetski action.  It's another side to this hallowed body of water in Italy's Lombardy region.  

This piece is a creative joy, brought to us by pilot antonioxt5. The footage of wakesurfers is incredibly sharp and the angles are impressive, tight, and perfectly framed. Combined with the already visually-interesting sport that is wakesurfing and the beautiful sun, blazing in the background, is his creative editing techniques - swiping and wiping footage from frame to frame. It’s a light, fun piece that should inspire you to try new editing tricks of your own.  The video was filmed in one of the rivers of the Moscow, Russia region.

The gigantic island of Greenland is a drone cinematographer's dream location. With natural beauty on display everywhere, epic sunsets and sunrises, minimal human disruption, and rare access it's no wonder great videos shot on the island of ice are hard to come by. This piece by maxbaloo is an instant classic -  complete with those mandatory dynamic shots, but also a few exciting clips of a wakeboarder zipping through the icy landscape.  The world's largest island, it's a territory of Denmark.

This sunset wake boarding shoot by top AirVuz contributor and pilot Rufus Blackwell is definitely a stunner. The talented pilot was shooting with DJI, the world's leading drone manufacturer, in Thailand on one of its many bodies of water. Professional wake line starts Andrey Soloviov, Daniel Meissner, and Jim Thirlon did what they do best blasting off jumps and nailing tricks with Rufus Blackwell tracked them with his DJI Inspire, inspiring many other pilots to try to do the same.

Wakeboarding is an exciting, adventure-seeking water sport that is a thrill to see from above. So is the case in this quick, creative edit by Jurgis Kreilis / FilmDay where an intruder is is coming to land on planet Earth when they’re distracted by a wake park in the distance. This James Bond-type edit features one talented wakeboarder as he flips, jumps and twists through the air, made all the better by the fantastic aerial filming work by this talented content creator, who hails from the Baltic republic of Latvia.