Aerial Services.
The area of aerial drone photography expands greatly beyond just casual use or hobbyist. There are vast uses for commercial drone photography in various industries that really can only be limited by your mind. Later we are going go cover just some of these industries and how it can benefit your business and take it to new heights (pun intended). Now I know that not everybody owns a drone, or even has the time to learn how to fly a drone little lone get those money shots for your business that you need. I mean lets face it if you own your own business or are over a project that warrants the use of camera drones then you probably got more pressing things that you need to be doing anyway rather than flying a drone. Unless of course you are just trying to have a little fun because these things are fun to fly. (warning- fly at your own risk, can become addicting :). There is good news though since you’re such a busy person and can’t be bothered by becoming addicted to flying camera drones you can hire aerial drone photography services or professionals do this for you! We will take a look at some of the basics things to look for when hiring a aerial drone professional. I will even give you a tricky tip on how to find them!
A Few Commercial Uses
First lets list just a few commercial uses for aerial drones to get the mind thinking about the many possibilities. Roof inspection is one now I’m not talking about one 900 sqft house here, if you got one of those you better just get your tail up ladder and look around, but instead I’m referring to a large facility like a factory, school, warehouses, etc. Now on some parts of these types of roofs can be very inaccessible to down right not worth risking life and limb to get to. Lets say you are inspecting your roof for heat loss due to poor or no insulation but you can’t get to that spot to properly test. So what do you do? That right! You guessed it, hire a drone photographer that uses a drone with a thermal imaging camera. This way you are able to map the heat loss on your roof, get it fixed, and no one has to be a parkour expert!
Golf Courses?
Golf Courses are another good candidate for drone photography. You may be thinking about doing it for just pretty pictures or videos, but could it actually help your golf game and give you better insight to your game? There is an article on golf digest that talks about this is greater detail but I’ll cover the highlights befiely. Basically getting aerial video footage of your golf swing while practicing literally gives you another perspective of your swing and the added bonus of seeing the ball at plus 200 ft in the air as it flies towards the green. I personally don’t play golf, but I did got to the Well Fargo PGA championship and had a blast! I say that to say this even though I don’t play golf even I got excited about this upcoming use. You can use commercial drone photography to combined 3D imaging software and topographical elevations to give you 3D golf course mapping need I say more? This allows you as a course owner the ability for higher standard of course maintenance, more accurate gps on carts, game strategy, etc. go check out the article at golf digest really cool stuff !
Special Event
Special event promotion or coverage is an exciting one to talk about because it’s not so much about work but about capture the spirit and fun of an event. There are 2 sides to this one is the promotion side let say you are running an a event or a festival and you need provide your vendors and food trucks with as much information as you can provide to make the setup process as smooth as possible prior to them arriving. Well one way is the use of aerial photography to survey the land and show a bird’s eye view of the location. I am kinda passionate about this being as my dad owns a bbq restaurant and we used to setup at many festivals and it would have been awesome to have something like this back then! If you are going to a new place, people everywhere, parking is crazy, and you are towing a big trailer trying to figure out where is the correct place to go its not too fun. If event coordinators were to take advantage of drone photography you could eliminate most of the confusion with an aerial picture and routes mapped out in detail which help provide efficiency and a pleasant experience. The second side which is now the fun stuff of capturing the event itself! You always are going to go around and take pictures or hire a photographer to do this to go on the website and promotion purpose for the next event. Everybody does this and if you want to step up your game and stand out then get some aerial shots! This adds more professionalism with only using a camera drone at a fraction of the cost of hiring a film crew. You get to make your own little commercial with some awesome looking aerial pictures and video that gets people excited about your event. I could probably write an entire article on just this topic because there is more I could say but you get the idea so I’ll spare you for now :).
Find a Professional
There are many more uses for commercial drone photography such as security, weddings, sport event coverage, commercials for small businesses, real estate, and even family photos, but for time sake we will not cover these in detail unless requested. As you can see the world of aerial photography is growing, becoming more of a normal thing, and has a ton of useful applications. Here are a few things that you should look for when hiring an aerial photographer or company. First you should look at the skill, experience, and body of work. You can easily tell from the quality of photos and videos that they have done in the past, you don’t want the Michael Bay “shaky cam” effect on your videos or stills. Second of course is the cost. There are enough aerial photography companies and freelancers to make it competitive enough so that you don’t get price gouged. You will be able to find quality aerial photographers without going top of the line. Third thing is and this is important not all companies or individuals are created equal you need to see if they specialize in one area or another. You don’t want a roof inspector who has a skill set with thermal imaging to come do your wedding and trust them to know when the right moment is to snap that perfect shot! Forth you want to have full rights to all photos and videos for reproduction and distribution. You may just want them to use a camera drone to film something but you want to do your own editing or have third party do it so you need those rights. Now here is my pro tip on how to find them and it is GOOGLE! Haha but in all seriousness there is a pleather of services out there for hire you can post a job on freelancer, search angie’s list, post in the classifieds both online and off, and even find a local hobbyist and ask the if the job is not huge.
I hope you can see the awesomeness and benefit of having aerial drone photography done for you on a commercial level to increase your professional look, save money, increase money, get those event money shots, and help that golf swing! Lets embrace the future and take advantage of camera drones and the exciting world that is aerial photography!