Pilot Brendan Gibbons gives behind-the-scenes details of what it was like to fly the quadcopter drone over flames during a controlled burn at Tucker Prairie in Kingdom City, Mo, on April 2, 2013. As a member of the program, Gibbons is learning to control the drone through a remote control and use the footage captured by the drone to assist in reporting. The story on the burn is the second story completed by the Missouri Drone Program, and was published on Tuesday, April 9 on Harvest Public Media and KBIA.

NBC freelance cameraman John Lewis came to film the Missouri Drone Journalism Program in Columbia, Mo, on March 8, 2013. When asked if he would ever use drone technology at his camera rental business, he said he’d leave it for the younger guys to experiment with.

Cade Cleavelin practiced using one of the Missouri Drone Journalism Program’s drones to fly over a few thousand snow geese congregating at Eagle Bluffs Conversation Area on Saturday, March 9. The mission of the trip was to capture an aerial shot that could illustrate just how many Snow Geese were in the area. The Snow Geese are in Columbia longer than usual due to heavy snowfall and other factors that disrupted their migration. Video by Jaime Cooke