One of our goals is affordable solutions. While our price structure is better than most regional competitors, helicopter-based aerial photography is just plain expensive. Customers often ask why we don’t use an airplane, which have lower operating costs. The problem with an airplane is their inability to hover, get into tight spaces, fly close to the ground, or generally maneuver in a way that a photographer needs to take advantage of the perfect combination of altitude, light, and location. More importantly, “low wing” airplanes make it impossible to get a good shot because the wings are often blocking the subject matter. “High Wing” planes make it difficult to get the right composition of light, since the wing is always blocking the sun. Helicopters, while more expensive to operate, completely eliminate these problems.
Pricing:
If customer needs are not urgent, we can normally wait for several projects to stack up, organize a flight plan that minimizes airtime, and spread flight costs over several projects. This model allows us to spread fixed flight costs over several customers so that no one person is responsible for the $450 per hour charge associated with operating our particular type of helicopter.
We offer a number of different solutions to meet your aerial photographic needs. Our work primarily falls into one of the three following areas:
- Stock Photos. For the last 3 years, we have been photographing downtown Chattanooga and various residential homes on Lookout Mountain and North Chattanooga. This collection is quite extensive and can be sold on a per picture basis. Prices range from $25 to $100 per picture, with very limited licensing restrictions.
- Custom Shoots – Non Urgent. Most of our work so far has been specific location photography where a developer or business owner needs 20 to 40 shots of multiple locations. This type of work is very popular as it provides the exact product to meet your needs. Depending on the urgency of your need, prices will differ. Assuming multiple projects can be accomplished on a single shoot, customers can expect to spend average of $200 to $300 per project.
- Custom Shoots – Urgent. If your need is urgent and our schedule allows us to mobilize quickly, we can arrange a shoot dedicated specifically to your project. Our fixed hourly helicopter cost is $450 / hour, with an approximate creative fee of $200 per flight. Because of these higher costs and our limited ability to act quickly (weather, our full-time jobs, other scheduling), this is not a large part of our business.
This is a general pricing guide and we encourage you to contact us for more specific costs, which are based on your particular project. All photographs are the property of Warren - McLelland Aerial Photography and are provided to customers under a very flexible user license. More about our copyrights and license agreement can be found on the “Copyright and Licensing” page on this site, but in general photographs are provided with unrestricted use and without the need for photographer credit.
All photographs are provided on CDROM as our expertise is in photography, not printing. Additionally, photographs are not modified or enhanced, but can be done for a separate fee (charged on an hourly basis of $75 / hour).