The unmanned aerial vehicles that are giving drones a good name

Use of drones in Nepal earthquake relief effort and Dronestagr.am, which allows users to upload their aerial photos, are just two examples of non-military use

You float above a garden in Belgium. There's not a soul in sight. In another picture a group of men stare up at you from the entrance of a church, eyes squinting in the sun. In another you drift across a charred landscape, black and scabbed, as if the desert has bubbled up in blisters. A caption by the user who uploaded the photo on to Dronestagr.am, Eric Hanscom, says: "I was at a seminar a while back where a man from the military explained that his strategy for drones was to put a drone in harm's way before he would put a person. I took the same approach with my Bebop over the mud volcanoes of the Salton sea."

Bebop is a consumer multirotor aircraft, a personal drone, and sites such as Dronestagr.am allow users to upload and share photographs and videos taken using their drones. The images on Dronestagr.am are mostly scenes of natural beauty: grand vistas, panoramic shots of beaches and red-roofed villages tucked between rolling hills. These photos are charted across a world map on the front page of the website, clustered around Europe, North America and South East Asia. There are very few photographs on the website from the Middle East.

It's important to do our bit to make sure that drones are seen in a positive light, as a content creation tool

I don't think there was ever much of a public perception of the military ones before the civilian ones arrived

Related: Lords urge compulsory registration of all civilian drones

Related: Is it possible to run a drone business with an ethical base? | Antony Loewenstein