I'm Dustin Werbeski, in my mid 30's & living back in the middle of nowhere, Canada. After 7 years in Europe, where I was pursuing my professional inline skating career, I am home in Regina, working on my arts, while still exploring & skating as much as I can.
Many years ago, I owned another brand's manual drone, and while launching it from my hand, it's GPS went on the fritz, the drone flipped around, and seriously sliced my finger, resulting in stitches and a decent scar. After that, I didn't think I'd own or fly a drone again. That was only until I saw the Skydio R1 and was blown away by it's autonomy, which I saw greatly helping with the filming of my rollerblading.
I was turned onto Skydio by another skater friend, Nick Lomax. (@nick_lomax) Him & I have worked together around the world for many years, and when I saw the quality he was creating with it in Europe, I needed to take one out into the North American mountains for the type of skating I do.
My rollerblading has taken an interesting turn the last few years, where I am now mostly skating off-roads with air filled tires. It's allowed me to escape the big cities, hike deep into nature, and skate some of the most surreal landscapes. A lot of times, I am skating alone and there is no better way to film these moments than launching an Skydio 2 and forgetting about it. This allows me to focus and enjoy the amazing riding ahead. I look forward to further developing this newer discipline of inline skating, while having my Skydio there to shoot it all.
It really is hard to choose my favorite Skydio video, as I have shot a lot over the years. All the footage is amazing, but it's the simple unpredictable things that usually shocks me while reviewing the clips. An example would be the ducks I didn't know I was about to film in cinematic slow-motion, while just flying around manually down a creek.
The first time I used Skydio, I was living in Vancouver, a large enough city to make it intimidating, so I took it up to the less populated biking trails on the North Shore, and dropped in on my off-road rollerblades. It was so impressive to watch it fly through the forest, avoiding all the trees, while still keeping up with me, and most importantly within the frame of the video. Of course, all the fear I had of being injured by another drone, was now completely gone, as the Skydio proved it's intelligence over and over again.
My tips for new Skydio flyers would be, shoot non-cloudy days if possible, and work with the light, anytime around "golden hour" is far superior to the mid day above lighting, which can cast a shadow of your Skydio on the scene. Also, just try experimenting with the more obscure Skills, they film from angles you would never even think of, and the results are amazing without having to do anything.
The skill I find myself enjoying the most is "Orbit", cause you will get the whole surroundings in the shot, but you can not really foresee the beauty that the Skydio will see, which is pretty much an impossible cinematic angle to get with any other setup, unless you want to rent a helicopter.
Most of my Skydio content gets shared through Instagram, either my own or my sponsors pages. Often it'll be found mixed into our advertisements around YouTube and other platforms alike. At the moment, I am launching my new portfolio and second page, which will act as an archives for everything I have created over the years. Although it'll be a balance, as there's a lot more content to come, like the release of my second pro skate and it's promotional tour later this year.
