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Permalink Reply by Rory Paul on April 15, 2010 at 12:15pm

less than you think...I was told that an established aerial photography company wants between $175 to $250 a shoot. This includes cost of the aircraft, photographer and a number of images. The implication is that if this work is not on your door step there is very little margin.

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Permalink Reply by Stephen McAmis on April 15, 2010 at 12:33pm

Actually that was a little more than I had anticipated. I was thinking about $150 per trip
A good solution might be to act as an independent contractor and work with some of the more traditional photo companies... this way you may have a chance to get the use of their already established marketing departments, leads, and possibly travel expenses paid.
This might give a person the chance to string several shoots together working from a regional stand-point... So if you can string several cities together in about a 300 mile leg (say like 4 or 5 cities per leg) then that's starting to run into some decent money... A good deal of the real money comes from the actual photo packages, so that would be an extra $200+ a pop for that service if it was done in some artful or relevant way.
Thanks Rory! I take this is very good news.

BTW... just in case anybody is wondering why I would put my business plan out for the public's consumption here... 1) it's keeping in the spirit of the site... all things transparent for the gain of us all 2) There is enough work out there, potentially and if worked correctly, that there is no reason everyone that see's this shouldn't be able to benefit from it... the market is no where near saturated enough for that... yet. And I figure it behooves us all to build the industry.

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Permalink Reply by Stephen McAmis on April 15, 2010 at 12:36pm

One more trick... don't just sell to one person/entity... offer the packages to all employee's (as a package deal) on the site at a relatively discounted rate. If you can get ten people to by for $100 then that is, of course, better than one buying for $250.

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Permalink Reply by Martin Seven on April 15, 2010 at 12:26pm

Here's one that's not affraid to put the prices out in the open: leteckafotografie.com.

1 USD is about 18.5 CZK right now, so they're asking $430 to $540 for "1 object imaging or complex object from several directions". Tax not included :)

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Permalink Reply by Martin Seven on April 15, 2010 at 12:37pm

Reading the other replies... wow, we sure have our sh..tuff expensive in here compared to the rest of the world. I guess the demand for AP is lower here.

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Permalink Reply by Wayne on April 15, 2010 at 12:28pm

I know when I recently got into all of this I was looking at satellite images and the companies were doing that for about $100-$150. But then end result was a very blury not very detailed image. This is when I finally decided to take matters into my own hands. Sure it costs more to create your own drone but the image quality is (or it should be) far better.

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Permalink Reply by Rory Paul on April 15, 2010 at 12:51pm

Stephen

If you are looking at commercial work unless you want to run foul of the FAA at some point I suggest looking at a tethered solution blimp based system. I developed a system a few years back just before the property market bubble and dropped it when we moved here to CA. You can do some good work at 500 feet using a blimp and now with smaller SLR cameras you can use very small blimps that doe not require a trailer. PM me if you want some info.

Good luck,

R.

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Permalink Reply by Wayne on April 15, 2010 at 12:59pm

FAA regulations (unless it changes from state to state) say to go no higher than 400 ft. I may not be doing it commercially and maybe that might be the difference, but I didn't have any slack at all when talking to my FAA rep. ;) For me it pretty much came down to what I was using it for, how big is it?, and is there an airport 3 miles or less away, along with staying under the 400 ft. high mark. Other than that I was good to go. Maybe do a little research with the FAA and see what they may or may not allow you to do , or just give them an idea of what you would like to do and see if they can give you any advice.

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Permalink Reply by Stephen McAmis on April 15, 2010 at 1:11pm

Rory... a L.T.A. system is exactly the sort I had in mind. I will likely be PMing you in the next couple of days regarding this, thank you.

Wayne... that's all good advice. I will heed it. Thank you.

Martin.. thanks for the link. About to check that out.

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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Sgt Ric on April 15, 2010 at 4:40pm

Also check in with the RCAPA group.

You'll see there are serious roadblocks when you move from recreational AP to commercial.

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Permalink Reply by Stephen McAmis on April 15, 2010 at 8:32pm

Thanks SGT... been there a few times already.
Roadblocks... I don't like those. It is those that I have been heavily crunching on overcoming.
Indeed, I have probably put more thought to overcoming those since I found this community than I have putting together my own rig/business.
That's probably putting the cart before the horse... still, the more I read the more I realize this is the work of special interests groups. There is a legitimate safety concern, but mostly it's people with money dictating terms serving their own self interests. This is not the time in our history, if there ever WAS a time in our history, for this sort of action. We need diversity in our employment , we need it yesterday, and these... (censored) ...are gumming the works.
So, how do you fight money and power? With money and power... or sometimes just one man with the right name.

I know you guys don't know me from Adam. And I will tell you truthfully that I am, by and large, nothing special... but, I am working on something that 'might' possibly give you guys a serious leg up on this. If it comes to fruition at all... it will be worth it.

I am not asking for anything from anybody... I figure you guys don't expect anything from me.
But, I have a strong desire to break that particular block in the FAA. To that end I will do what I can.

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Permalink Reply by Mike on April 15, 2010 at 3:24pm

Stephen,
check our runryder.com and aplanding.com - both have extensive information on aerial photography and lots of very professional and helpful guys there.

Mike

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