In September of 2003, the Hortons started a business called CopterViews (Now CopterViews, LLC), which Brett Horton calls an unconventional aerial photography business. “Conventional is using full-size fixed wing or rotor wing aircraft to shoot photos. We use remove piloted aircraft,” he says.
Myrtle Beach residents now for almost two years, the Hortons kept coming here to do real estate and land development shots. “We always wanted to make the move,” says Brett Horton. “Tracy and I quit our jobs and put our house up for sale.” Says Tracy Horton: “Our house sold in two weeks. We packed up and moved.”
The majority of projects shot by CopterViews cover 250 acres or less; in many cases under half an acre. These remote-piloted copters can get in much closer to the subject matter, greatly improving photo quality. Cost and turnaround time are much more reasonable for the simple reason that full-size fixed-wing outfits take on numerous projects per flight and cannot reasonably accommodate on-demand, single location requests. “We’re not shooting through heat or haze distortion,” says Brett Horton. “The camera is out in the open under the helicopters, so we’re not shooting through Plexiglass.”
Clients are predominantly land developers, real estate companies, golf courses, and resorts, but as Tracy Horton admits, “We are finding more and more people who use our pictures for different things.” Their Web site, www.copterviews.com asserts, “The accuracy of CopterViews has already been established as this technology was used to certify the sandcastle at the Sun Fun Festival which is now listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.”
The Hortons were enlisted by the Burroughs and Chapin Co. to track the progress of the Ripken Experience as it was being developed and built in Myrtle Beach, and the pair recently went back to take pictures of a tournament-in-progress.
Local firm T2H Advertising called on CopterViews to take photos along the beach for a recent project. Individual homeowners can call on them as well, and the team has tracked various road construction projects. Their database boasts more than 200 clients, but Brett Horton says that the majority of their work lies in the realm of technical photos – progressive pictures of projects for various stockholders to keep track of a building or resort’s construction. “But it can be used anywhere,” he says.
CopterViews boasts the capability to handle virtual tours, starting from what they call “balcony shots.” They have flown over degraded chimneys and steeples damaged by lightning, eliminating the need for crews to erect scaffolding for inspections. They have also participated in traffic pattern studies.
Brett Horton explains the piloting process: “I translate whatever the helicopter’s doing into my thumbs. I have to see the helicopter at all times. It’s harder to fly a model because you’re not physically in the machine. You don’t have the nuances you would have. You need to translate this into what you’re seeing instead.” But everything is the same as far as controls. “At any time you’re doing five things with the radio to stabilize the helicopter.”
The copters utilize high-performance 2 stroke motors and run on a naphtha-gas based mixture similar to Coleman fuel.
Tracy Horton relies on Sony and Nikon hi-resolution cameras for still photography, and can employ video if the client requests it. “I have a screen on a tripod on the ground,” she says. “I control the camera mount that’s hanging from the helicopter, and take pictures in real time. I can pan left and right, tilt and zoom if a client wants something specific.”
CopterViews has been good to the Hortons. “It was an educated risk,” says Brett Horton, “so far it’s worked out nicely.”
article was written by: Roger Yale of the Weekly Surge |
