{"id":628329,"date":"2026-10-12T13:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T13:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/628329\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T13:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T13:46:11","slug":"how-this-woman-improved-her-mental-health-with-drone-videos-of-the-sask-countryside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/628329\/","title":{"rendered":"How this woman improved her mental health with drone videos of the Sask. countryside"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Text<\/p>\n

Listen to this article<\/p>\n

Estimated 3 minutes<\/p>\n

The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.<\/p>\n

Cheryl West likes to focus when she’s flying.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I don’t like when anyone talks to me when I’m on the drone. I am in that world,” she says.<\/p>\n

West and her husband Kirk Lee upload drone footage of Saskatchewan’s countryside and small towns on their Facebook page, Cheryl’s Videos and Pics\/Wild West Drones, which now has thousands of followers.<\/p>\n

She says the pastime has turned into a vital support for her mental health.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

West tried out drones when her son suggested them six years ago. (Submitted by Cheryl West)<\/p>\n

Living in Grenfell, about 100 kilometres east of Regina, she didn’t truly appreciate rural Saskatchewan’s beauty until she saw it from above, she said in an interview with CBC News.<\/p>\n

“What a lot of the followers are really appreciating is seeing scenes that no one can see unless you’re up from the air,” she said.<\/p>\n

Her son suggested she start flying a drone six years ago.<\/p>\n

“I thought, ‘Me? A drone? In my 50s? What?'”<\/p>\n

\"Aerial<\/p>\n

A drone shot of a stone house near Edenwold, Saskatchewan (Youtube\/Cheryl’s Videos and Pics Wild West Drones)<\/p>\n

She had to support her daughter through daily epilepsy seizures until surgery three years ago, and go through mourning the deaths of multiple family members.<\/p>\n

“I never had a chance to actually grieve each moment because there was always something happening, and so this flying out there, and the support with Lee, is great,” West said.<\/p>\n

She never thought of herself as an artist, but it connected her to her father, who also photographed scenery. He died in 2000.<\/p>\n

“Before he passed away he had said to me, ‘Don’t worry. I will live through you.’ \u2026 With the drone I thought, ‘That’s exactly what he meant.’ He was going to live through me with his photography.’<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

A shot from the Qu’appelle Valley, one of West’s favourite places to film. (YouTube\/Cheryl’s Videos and Pics Wild West Drones)<\/p>\n

She and her husband spend hours on the road every week. Both of them fly drones while she records sound from a camera on the ground. Editing takes three to five hours \u2014 including time to choose just the right music.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know what I would do without the drones for my mental health,” she said.<\/p>\n

What’s the connection between photography and mental health?<\/p>\n

Therapeutic photographer Dre Erwin\u00a0told CBC News he’s seen a similar connection to mental health for himself and the youth he works with in northern Saskatchewan.<\/p>\n

“Photography for me was the art of actually just focusing on the good in life, focusing on something amazing and sharing it with other people,” said Erwin, who is also a primary care nurse and the founder of the Pinehouse Photography Club.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Dre Erwin says photography helps people see more beauty in the world. (Submitted by Dre Erwin)<\/p>\n

He moved to Pinehouse, 200 kilometres north of Prince Albert, after personal struggles, including getting caught in a tornado, and was inspired to use photography to support his and the kids’ mental health, he said.<\/p>\n

“Many of them didn’t even know the northern lights existed, until they started seeing my pictures. It didn’t take long for them to realize not just that they were there, but they could capture them themselves.”<\/p>\n

Photography helps people appreciate the world around them more, Erwin said.<\/p>\n

“Maybe most people do think that Saskatchewan’s flat, right? And there’s nothing to see. But especially with drone photography and night photography, time-lapse photography, there is a lot of beauty here and sometimes you just have to look a little harder for it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[134,554,555,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-628329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}