LET IT FLY!

Ever wondered what beautiful Louisiana looks like from several feet above the surface?

Houma native Stu Babin and his daughter Brooklynn have.

Together, the father and daughter duo are showing Cajun culture to us in ways we’ve never seen it before.

The Babins have created a YouTube channel, titled “Let’s Fly Drones Already” to showcase their shared hobby. The father and daughter use their channel to show local scenery in ways most locals have never seen it before, a quickly growing commodity that’s gaining a following with 103 subscribers. Of course, the fact that they’re doing it together, as a family, makes it even better — the icing on the cake for what they both say are wonderful times making memories.

“We’re always spending time together doing daddy-daughter stuff, but this is like a creative adventure and we get to repeat it every weekend,” Stu said. “Brooklynn will come up with ideas as will I, then we bring it to life.”

“I love it!” Brooklynn said of her shared passion with her dad. “Lately, my dad has been out of town a lot during the week for work, so on the weekends, we get to re-unite and catch up. We have bonding moments while flying and it’s just a lot of fun.”

The idea for a YouTube channel is a passion project for the family.

Stu is a FAA remote pilot. He flies drones for Morris P. Hebert locally in the company’s remote sensing department. At the end of last year, he said he bought his own drone and started flying it at different sites locally for charity or for hire.

During some of those assignments, Brooklynn would tag along and quickly, she took a liking to capturing nature in unique ways — just like her dad.

“She was my helper and she’d serve as my visual observer,” Stu said.

Brooklynn, herself, has even started to fly the drone, too, learning the talent from her dad over the past several months.

“We were flying the drone at my grandparents’ house and my dad was practicing some new tricks,” she said. “So I asked if I could fly, and he started to show me how — from taking off, to handling movements and landing.”

As the passion grew, the Babin’s got the idea to take their footage to YouTube as a way of showing their cool, unique footage to others in the community, knowing that they, too, would likely want to see our community in ways they’ve never seen it before.

Stu said he also wants the

family YouTube channel to inspire younger people to see the fun, creative ways that technology can be used — to hopefully inspire people to choose career paths that can put these same machines in their own hands someday in their career choices.

Stu said he also believes that the channel can give Brooklynn a leg-up in her future, too. She says she wants to be a nurse at Children’s Hospital. Why? Because she saw how nurses cared for her little brother when he was born and wanted to do the same for others someday.

“I believe (the YouTube channel) will help her in whatever path she chooses in life,” Stu said. “How cool would it be to have on a resume, ‘Created YouTube channel with my dad and we fly drones and video our adventures?’ I’m a tech-geek and love the technology side she is getting exposure to, but I am also proud of the local culture that she is experiencing even more.”

And that local culture is on full display in all of the family’s videos.

This weekend, the Babin’s posted footage above the Ardoyne Plantation. They’ve also flown over Dularge, the Mississippi River and other local scenes.

The marshes and anything involving water, Stu says, are his favorites, though Brooklynn has a different favorite from the family album.

“We’ve filmed in areas of Cocodrie, Dulac and Dularge and those videos are some of my favorite,” Stu said. “There’s something about flying over those coastal areas that feels so freeing. When the wind is blowing the grass, birds are flying alongside you, you feel completely part and connected to it all.”

“My favorite place we flew was Southdown Plantation,” Brooklynn added. “Last weekend, we flew over the Mississippi River beside the Luling Bridge, which was very pretty. I love any location over water and the ‘flying effect’ it makes you feel in the videos.”

In the coming weeks, the family continues to fly, surveying local scenes and showing them to people around the world.

Stu said he’s networked with similar pages in the past couple months and the comments they’ve gotten have been motivating and refreshing.

“For many, this might be the first or only time some viewers see our bayous and swamps,” Stu said.

But ultimately, while showcasing our area to the world is nice, the icing on the cake is that he gets to do it with his daughter — a feeling he said can’t be beat and is why the project has become such a joy.

“I think Brooklynn and I’s fun-spirited relationship shines as well in these videos,” Stu said. “We sometimes include bloopers at the end and none of that is staged. We are plain and simple having a blast doing this. And I haven’t found another daddy-daughter drone team yet, so who knows? Maybe we’ll inspire others to do the same!”

“It’s pretty cool when someone comments about liking what we do,” Brooklynn said. “I’m hoping we inspire people to do similar things or just spend time with their families and go on adventures, too, like me and my dad.”

Father Stu and Babin and daughter Brookiynn love Daddy and Daughter time. But for them, that often consists of flying drones and showing footage of our area to a global YouTube aunience.

COURTESY

Brooklynn Babin smiles during a drone video she and her father shot for their YouTube channel. The family is gaining a following with more than 100 social media subscribers. They hope to inspire others to look into the fun ways technology can create family time.

COURTESY