The Boulder Parks and Recreation’s EXPAND waterskiing program is celebrating its 30th anniversary of helping people with disabilities. The program began with humble beginnings when Jim Ziegler first decided to share his time and his boat on Boulder Reservoir to get people out waterskiing who would not ordinarily get the chance. The program uses innovative equipment and dedicated volunteers to get about 15 inspiring individuals on the water each week during the summer. So when my friend, Mickey, asked I if would be interested in filming their program with my quadcopter, I jumped at the chance.
Early in the morning of July 30th, I arrived at the reservoir, unpacked my Phantom quadcopter, and soon had a small crowd checking it out as I hovered it above the ground. In the process of explaining how the little aerial camera worked, I got to meet most of the volunteers and participants who were excited to have yet another piece of innovative equipment being used on their behalf. I got about 20 minutes of flight time over the course of the next hour which included some aerial perspectives of the unique approaches that are used by the EXPAND team to launch and recover the skiers near the dock.
The footage was a bit shaky and not framed particularly well, but most viewers don’t seem to really care since they are focusing their attention on the people in the program. The video that I pulled together has made it onto the websites for both the city’s EXPAND site and the non-profit EXPAND’s site and has managed to drum up a little more excitement for this wonderful program as it celebrates its 30th year. I couldn’t ask for much more from a beautiful morning spent on the water with cool folks!
Check out the video below:
[…] used it to create several cool videos including one of Dane Jackson kayaking and another of the EXPAND handicapped water skiing program in […]