Aerial photography business in new england

winters2k1

New Member
Hi guys,
I am new to the forums and just starting up a drone photography business. I have built my website myself ( go gentle as it was my first site) and just wanted to get some of your guys input. I have a few portfolio items with some drone shoots. Currently using a DJI phantom 3 pro

www.maineskyimagery.com
 

dazzab

Member
Welcome to the forum. I've found this forum to be much friendlier and encouraging than many others so hopefully your time here will be fun. I had a look at your site and can see that you are just starting out in an area that appears to be fairly new to you. That can be good and bad IMHO. I like the name you have chosen for the business.

I don't think it would be useful to discourage you as for all I know you could be hugely successful given time. But looking at the info you presented I did think that you might benefit from working with someone else in the business first to get a better understanding of it all. A few questions I would ask are:

Is what your are doing legal?
What are your goals/expectations?
Are you properly insured to protect yourself from liability issues and any damage that your activities may cause?
Do you think your pricing is realistic to cover the costs of operating a business?
Do you feel that you have the proper qualifications, training and experience to operate this service?
Do you have enough of the proper equipment to provide a professional service?

I'm just starting out as well here in Australia. I have professional qualifications in related areas and have taken years to bring it together including investing in a lot of training. This appears to be much different to your approach. So I'm not sure if my feedback is helpful or not.

Have a read through the forums. There's a wealth of information here that I'm confident you will find useful.
 

winters2k1

New Member
Thanks for the very thoughtful response! I am just starting out and it is something very new to me. I never flew a drone before getting the DJI phantom 3 for the specific purpose of starting a little side business. I am going for a very low initial investment cost and will try to work through word of mouth for the most part.

Is what your are doing legal? In the united states it is technically not legal to do a commercial drone business ATM without a section 333 exemption however no one has been charged for doing a commercial business yet so its kind of a gray area
What are your goals/expectations? Honestly not looking to make any money, its more of a hobby with the chance of making money. I am an engineer with a full time job so that pays the bills. This would be purely a weekend type thing
Are you properly insured to protect yourself from liability issues and any damage that your activities may cause? I currently do not have any insurance so I only fly around houses that are empty.
Do you think your pricing is realistic to cover the costs of operating a business? I have no operating cost other then the intial purchase of the phantom 3 and the gas to drive to shoots. I have started with extremely low prices to build a portfolio and once I have tested the market I will start to raise them
Do you feel that you have the proper qualifications, training and experience to operate this service? I am a born gamer so I feel very comfortable flying the quad and I have experience with post production work for the photography side.
Do you have enough of the proper equipment to provide a professional service? I am of the opinion that the camera on the phantom 3 provides very professional quality shots.
 

Kilby

Active Member
Hi Welcome to the forum.

Reading through your answers above as well as your website I might offer a few pointers.

1. Your prices are way low. I see above that you mentioned you set them low because you want to build up a body of work/portfolio, and that is fine, but if you are building a portfolio a MUCH better way to do it is to actually do work for free at first. As crazy as it sounds, it will be easier for you in the long run. Cut your teeth and learn your chops while offering free portfolio work, then come back to the idea of charging a real wage. I'd take the prices off of there entirely. What will happen is that you will get a reputation as not being a professional with prices like that and that will be a hard thing to shake off later. I don't know of anyone that would even walk out of the house for the prices that you are charging (or even 2-3x them). I've actually been turned down for work when I didn't charge enough (crazy, right!?) because the client was used to working with professional that charged 2-3x what I was offering (as a favor for a friend.. favors always bite you in the ass).

2. Get insurance. I know that you said this is just a hobby for you now, but that won't make a bit of difference if someone wants to take action against you if you happen to find one of those damn "gravity hotspots" directly above someones property. As fun as this is, there is a real liability issue here and you should be covered. If you aren't, you are just asking to get in trouble, especially if you are still a little green behind the ears when it comes to piloting.

3. Learn your gear inside and out. If you just got started, you are probably flying 100% of the time in GPS mode. Get out of that habit right now. One of these days, that will fail and you will need to be able to pilot the ship back manually. This ties into #2 above. If you are flying nose in 300 yards out overtop of a house and suddenly lose GPS, or even worse start to have a "DJI error" and it tries to fly away, what are you going to do? You have to be able to fly in ATTI mode in almost any situation in order to recover when something happens. It may not happen right away, it may never happen, but you need to be prepared if it does. There is nothing worse than losing control of your aircraft while on a job and causing damage or worse, hurting someone. Also, learn how to properly set up your camera without having to rely on the automatic setting. If you are selling photography services, you should be a photographer.

4. As soon as you are ready to start charging, buy more gear. You can't run a business with one aircraft. I almost always show up with at least two on site and a few more at home. You never know what is going to happen and you should be prepared if something does. Two of the same will work, but just make sure you have a back up, especially if someone is counting on you to get a job done in a certain time frame.

5. One last thing... practice, practice practice. While it might seem like you are getting that killer shot right now, I can guarantee you that you will look back in a year and wonder how you thought that. Learn to make your movements as smooth as possible and try to use camera movements you see in real movies as inspiration. A lot of the work I do is actually taking the place of a jib/dolly/crane because it's just easier to have us do it than to set all that up. We do a lot of low earth work that most people would never even know was shot by a drone unless they are training to notice such things.

Good luck with everything and stay safe. If you are going to be doing this professionally, you might want to look into also getting your 333 exemption with the FAA at some point. Some clients won't hire you without one.

-Terry
 

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