Put a veteran aviator of 70 years ago into a DC3 and he/she will probably gift you with many, many stories about how they were able to "fly that bird" by the seat of the pants, in all weathers. The technology of the time was pretty good, but certainly by today's standards fairly simple requiring an almost constant level of human input from start up to touch down. Put that same aviator into the left hand seat of an A380 or Boeing 787 and he/she would struggle to understand how it was possible to get such a huge aircraft off the ground, using that "funny little stick thing". Try and explain to the aviator the complex technology behind how it is possible for these aircraft to fly and there's a good chance that soon after uttering the phrase "fly by wire" their eyes will begin to glaze over!
However, cut through all that
stuff but call upon their basic knowledge of flying and there would probably be a very good chance they would be able to master the mechanics of getting the A380 or 787 off the ground and to maintain some semblance of controlled flight. I suspect that unwittingly, for the veteran aviator at least, it would mostly be the aircraft's "back-room" technology which got it off the ground, prevented stall situations and "sniffed" the airspace around it to help minimise (avoid) the risk of flying into to something other than more clear air.
Maybe the analogy is not the best, but hopefully you get the picture. Flying a UAV with simple technology would be perfectly possible, but as a pilot your work would almost solely be focused on the physical effort involved in the mechanics of flying, with other activities such as photography likely being a very distant and low priority - if you wanted your pride and joy to survive beyond its maiden rotation. Flying the current generation of prosumer type UAV's doesn't require you to hold an engineering degree or to have mastered aviation physics, but it certainly offers you the luxury of exploring new frontiers in flying and photography - all relatively simply.
In fact, I would suggest, alongside UAV's full-size cousins, the tech' brain of our favourite bird probably wants the vagaries of human "interference" with their mathematical abilities to keep an aircraft flying safely to be kept to an absolute minimum.
Play with my control surfaces and take your photographs, but leave the "real" grunt work to me. Trust me, I know what I'm doing!