The Drone Dish: ChristianTinman

Christian Henning, AKA ChristianTinman on AirVūz, talks to Ryan Hoag on this episode of The Drone Dish. He's from Cape Town, South Africa originally, but now lives in Hawaii where he works in Television. Check out some of his best videos as well as some others that inspire his great work!

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And for more amazing aerial views, check out AirVūz.com VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Ryan Hoag: Welcome to The Drone Dish. Today we have Christian Henning, also known as Christian Tinman. Christian, good afternoon. Christian H.: Hey there. Thanks for having me on. Ryan Hoag: Hey, we're happy to have you on The Drone Dish. Now, I have to ask. You live in Hawaii, you're from South Africa, which one is more visually stunning from that aerial perspective? If you had to pick one. Christian H.: If had to pick one? That's kind of a hard one [00:00:30] because I feel I get in trouble on some end of the coin there. But, Hawaii is amazing and most of my flights has been in Hawaii so I would have normally said Hawaii. But, on a recent trip I just went back home to South Africa recently in June. I was just astounded at the visuals you can get there, but, at the skies. They have the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Like, things you get maybe once or twice a year anywhere else in the world, it's like literally every day for them. Ryan Hoag: And your video you've uploaded, African Sunrise, has a pretty cool back story to [00:01:00] it. What is that? Christian H.: Well, we were in South Africa. I had a couple of things I really wanted to shoot while I was there. I asked my friends to give me an idea about something else we can shoot. If you've ever Googled Cape Town South Africa especially, the most feature that gets shared all the time is Table Mountain. It's a very famous mountain down there. To the left of it there's a little mountain called Lion's Head that kind of overlooks that mountain. So my friend said, "Hey, how about we climb Lion's Head, get some sunrise shots off Table Mountain and downtown Cape Town." So, that whole video's just about that experience and [00:01:30] the craziness of hiking with drone, backpack, tripod, all my camera gear up cliff bases in the dark. Ryan Hoag: One of my favorite things about your videos is it kind of takes you on a journey. Almost a vlog of sorts. You talked about South Africa trip, first time in 10 years you had visited and you surprised your mom. What was the inspiration for that? Christian H.: Well, I just ... Like you said, I had not been home in 10 years. I've lived in the States for about 13 years now. [00:02:00] I went home once and then just, life ... You know, life gets busy. Work, kids, all that kind of stuff. So, I was getting onto a project with Red Bull and we were going to film an athlete in Namibia. Then my plan was to just go for a week afterwards and spend some time with my mom and sister. The athlete got injured two weeks before we had to leave on the shoot. So, the shoot got canceled. So I had to call my family and say, "Sorry guys, I'm not going to come again." Ah, it's terrible every one was sad. But then Red Bull called me the next day and said, "Hey, we just heard you haven't been home in 10 years. We want you to keep your ticket." Which was crazy. [00:02:30] So them and another company called Kauboy Productions they were the ones putting this thing together for us. So I called my sister, I said, "Hey, don't tell anybody but I'm still coming to Cape Town. I wanted to surprise mum." If you've seen the video, if you've taken the time to watch it, you'll see that really my mom was taken aback. I was a little bit worried for a second there we might cause her a heart attack or something. But, luckily didn't and she was just glad to see me. Ryan Hoag: When you're not surprising your mom, or going on amazing trips back home, you seem to fly your drone quite often. Drone a Day [00:03:00] Hawaii 4K kind of takes you through that journey of ... Do you do it every single day? And how long did that span? Christian H.: That one's probably like a two or three month window. I think most of the summer holiday with my kids. What happens is I work in television and I travel a lot for my work because I follow a surf tour around the world. So, I'm usually so busy I don't get a lot of time to do my own creative projects. So, I just decided I'm going to do something and force myself to get my drone up once a day. Because everybody can do ... We can all take 10 minutes, throw [00:03:30] up our drone somewhere and take a photo or a 10 second video. That's my rule to myself. Either one photo or one 10 second video. So, I started doing that and because it was summer holiday my kids on a lot of the trips with me. So, I just kind of did a little vlog about one of our trips and then try to show some of the footage we took from over the summer. So that's what that video's about. Ryan Hoag: And if you have 30 seconds anywhere in the world to capture from above that you haven't visited yet, where would you use that to get that 30 seconds of footage? Christian H.: I would have to say the highest on my list has to be [00:04:00] the Great Wall of China. I've seen a couple of vlogs on You Tube and I believe one of the videos on your channel even where someone flew out to China. And it's just, it's such ... It's something you can see from space. It's something that not every persons going to get to see in their life. To be able to fly a drone there would be just awe inspiring I think. Ryan Hoag: Do you have a favorite user that you follow on our site, or a category? Christian H.: Right now one of my favorite guys to follow is Optical Hawaii. He's actually also from the island of Oahu. But his videos are ... I mean, that's what I aspire [00:04:30] to put some videos out like those one day. Ryan Hoag: And you're a private pilot as well. You've had a pilot license for a number of years. How does that transfer into being able to fly a drone? Christian H.: I think for me as a pilot when it came to starting to fly drones, and especially flying anywhere where there's people or close to event sites before the FAA rules starting coming out about controlling those kind of things. It made me more aware. It made me aware of the airspace I was in. I always check the weather, that's just something you do as a pilot. You're always going to look at what weather conditions you're going to be [00:05:00] dealing with. I see a lot of people take drones and fly them but they don't think through their actions. Or they don't have plans. Like, "If this happens to the drone while I'm flying over a crowd how do I avoid hurting someone?" So, I think it just gave me a little bit more of an awareness, which I'm glad to see for most people wanting to do commercial droning right now we all have to get on that page now. Ryan Hoag: Well, Christian, we certainly enjoy having you a part of our community here at Air Views and we look forward to more uploads soon. Christian H.: Thank you so much for having me on guys. It was awesome.