I am a professional photographer with 35 years of experience shooting nothing but architecture.
Bought a
Phantom 4 Pro+ 2 weeks ago and passed my 107 exam on 3/28 with a 97%. BTW, one of the missed questions was really an 'opinion' question...
Enough about me. What I really want to bring up is the value of photography. I just read a thread where some were feeling pretty good about getting paid less than 20 bucks to drive to a house and take some photos of it for, presumably, real estate purposes. While I cannot tell anyone what to do with their time, or encourage them to think of the RISKS they take on when they choose to take on such low paying work - I CAN tell people about the value of good photography in hopes that the prevalence of aerial photo platforms does not devalue the market too terribly.
I hired out for a guy to shoot some stills and video of a high end roof installation about 4 years ago. I shot everything from the ground and the other guy did the work from the air with a quadcopter. He charged me 1200.00 for the hour and I marked that up to 1500.00 and added it to my fees. My client paid about 3000.00 for the photography and, here is where most people have NO clue... the RIGHTS to use them.
Photography is not a parts and labor kind of business. It is, in every practical and LEGAL respect, a form of creative intellectual property. Even when you semi-mindlessly fly over a house or a nice landscape and accidentally depress the shutter button, you have created something which is uniquely yours. And, there MAY be significant value in what you have.
After I had taken my 107 Knowledge Exam, the administrator congratulated me on my 97%. I told him that I had something of an advantage because for more than 25 years I regularly shot from a helicopter and had racked up probably over 1000 hours of flight time, during which I asked questions about air space, radio protocols, and VFR rules regarding weather. In those 1000+ hours I would often shoot things that I just happened to 'see' as we passed something interesting on the ground. Once we flew over a small pond that was completely covered in pond scum and algae. I took that image and uploaded it to a stock photo site. That image alone has sold multiple times with one of those being for 900.00 to Herman Miller Corporation. As an aside, I would often fly with both a flight instructor AND a student pilot, always an advanced flyer. Twice, that student was Sonny Perdue, now the Secretary of Agriculture for the U.S. He was governor of GA at the time and it felt really odd as a barked my orders at him for where to turn and when and how much.
I digress.
Is everything I point my camera at going to be worth, or going to generate a 900.00 bill? No. But, I guarantee you that if I make a habit of valuing my work for 19.00 for a SET of images, it will NEVER happen.
In the mid 2000's, the 'penny stock' (not stock market... stock photos) concept did immeasurable harm as everyone with a digital camera suddenly became a photographer and thought getting 5 dollars for a photograph was a great deal for them. No. It was a great deal for the businesses that now had nearly free photography 'on tap'. At least at that point in time aerial photography still required a significant investment in a helicopter or plane charter so my aerial photos still sold pretty well, and sometimes still do.
Please do some research and consider the value of your photography, if that is what you are mostly doing with your flying. And don't be happy with having earned enough money in 12 hours of your time to be able to get a spare battery for your P4 Pro.
I know I have sounded like I am just tooting my own horn, and for a first post that is probably pretty bad form. But let me put the icing on the cake. I spent 8 days photographing a large industrial facility during the summer of 2016. After I photographed this project I had about 180 photographs that, in addition to the owner of the facility that contracted me, had a solid half dozen other firms that were interested in LICENSING the images from me. If I had asked 10 dollars per image for each of the other interested parties I could have made an extra 2,150.00 based up the number of images I licensed. That would have been enough to buy a
Phantom 4 Pro+ and the DJI care package. WOW!
Instead, I asked what I KNEW the images were worth and ended up with sales adequate to buy more than 20 Phantom 4 Pros. And that included a lot of 'quantity' discounting.
Not bragging. Just illustrating a point from a real world experience.
If you get good photographs you should be able to get GOOD money for them. But you most certainly will NOT if you do not ask for it. What might just be serendipitous spending money to you - could have cost a professional photographer his next mortgage payment.