Hi, I'm Tamara Lackey and on this episode
of reDefine show for AdoramaTV, I speak
with Travis Jack, an early adopter of
drones photography, who turned a one-time
hobby into a thriving aerial photography
business, covering more opportunities and
genres and you might expect. Check it out.
Thank you so much for coming by today.
Thank you for having me. I really
appreciate it. This is awesome! It is
awesome and we haven't even started! I know I get to
be here in this nice new studio. Yeah.
Well not brand-new, like six
five, months old now. Feels new. Very nice.
And you brought your little friend. I did
I brought one, one of the many!
Tell us a little bit about a couple of
things. One, how many drones do you own?
Ok, right now we have probably five or
six that are operational,
that we kind of rotate through, and we
have several of this platform, because
it's modular, so I can pull this camera
off. I can put a like GoPro-ish type
camera on there I can put a thermal
camera on there where I can see body
heat where we can use it for search and
rescue, that sort of thing, or I can leave
this, which is based on a Panasonic GH4
DSLR. Perfect and this is, how does this
compare in size to your others. Um, this
is one of the kind of medium size,
we have the little, tiny small, called a
fan, and they're about this big, and then
we have the big you know... octocopters
that carry like a full-frame DSLR. How
heavy are those. Fully loaded out with the
gimbal would run and everything, they
come in mid40. Right, in the forty power
range. Ok, and how did you get into this?
So I got into this completely by
accident. I had no intentions of ever
really becoming a professional
photographer, it just kind of happened I
did almost 15 years in law
enforcement. I worked law
enforcement in Tennessee, which is where
I grew up, and then went out west and
took a position with federal government,
and then ended up relocating back here
because my wife is from here, to here, to
Raleigh, or Raleigh down the road. Yeah,
the wife is from Raleigh, so I worked
almost nine years with Raleigh police.
During that time, I started doing some
amateur drone photography. Probably back
in like 2012. Was that just for you as a
hobby outside of
your career. That's just something
something I bought, like a little
thousand-dollar drone off Amazon, and was
playing around with it until my wife
found out how much it cost as was mad at
me and told me I needed, to find a way to
make money with it or get rid of it, so
it was literally just for just for fun! I
bought it just to play around with,
started snapping photos, you couldn't
even that time, you couldn't even see
what your camera was seeing. I had no
real idea of framing or anything you
just flew it up in the air, pointed it in
the general direction of something
interesting, and let the cameras snap
away, and then you land and go through
all the photos and you might have a
handful that we're worth looking at. So
how did you get from that, to now, where
you are doing very well. Right with
drone photography, aerial photography! Right it
was a slow progression, you know we
started out, like we had a couple of
entities notice our work, probably the
first entity that really noticed this
and started helping us out were the
downtown Raleigh Alliance, and their
whole mission is promoting downtown
Raleigh. Right! So they started wanting to
license our photos so we'd license a
couple photos, so, um, you know, on their
website on their social media. And these
are just the still photos at that time?
At that time, yeah, it was just like
some neat shots of downtown Raleigh.
Looking back on them, compared to what we
do now, there you know, ok. Yeah they're
compared to what what we're doing now!
Right. You know looking back at him
then they were neat then, like in
2012-2013, because it was such a new
concept, nobody else was doing it. Sure. So
started doing that, then my wife and I
started kind of brainstorming. My wife was
working real estate marketing, and she
said you know this would be great for
shooting houses. Yeah, so we did a couple
for real estate agents for free in the
beginning. Just to kind of see if it was
something that would work, got some new
equipment got a cam-drone to where you
could actually see real-time what the
camera was seeing. You could control the
camera from the ground.Open your eyes, that
changed the game so, once we were
able to do that then we were able to do
a lot more. You could frame up things, then
we start being able to do video, realize
I didn't know anything about video. Right!
Had to learn a lot. Yeah, and we just
continued to grow. I've been fortunate to
have some other
like people that I work with,
like freelance guys that have taught me
a lot, and they've also been great assets
whenever I need them. So, if I have a
really big video project I can bring on
a dedicated editor, or a dedicated motion
graphics artist. Hey! You know, second
camera operators, and having the network
of those guys, has really took my
business from a hobby, to very busy, to
where we are now, which is very busy.
Which is great. I'm thankful every
day for it. And did you retire from the
police force around the same time you
started getting up to speed with drone photography?
So that was a hard that was a really hard
decision to make, because I was, you know
a good chunk of the way into my career
towards aguaranteed retirement
pension and all that, so I really had to
kind of way things back and forth, and I
just set some benchmarks of income and
said here's what I'm making at the
police department, here's what my
business needs to be making on an annual
base. Right. And I kind of did that, made
sure I could do that two years in a row
and sustain it. So I did a whole lot of
work, double duty working both, for two years,
of police work, yeah actually a little
bit longer, but it was in the beginning,
we were so slow I would get maybe a
shoot on a weekend, or one or two
shoots a week. Ok the last year at the
police department I took about seven
years worth of vacation time in a year,
well so I burned through like 500 hours
worth of my vacation right, to go out and
do photo and video shoots, to travel, we
did shoots in Iowa, Virginia, Georgia,
South Carolina, while still
with the police department.
And that's why I asked, cause that's usually a
tough balance for people when they're
trying to make that call. It was
hard. To keep secure. It was, it's,
you know, it's kind of like I described
it like Tarzan, like you don't want
to let go of one branch until you have a firm
grip on the next one, but eventually you
know, talking it over with some of my
friends, some of my fellow officers,
everything said if I'm going to do it, now
is the time! Yeah, we were busy enough to
sustain us, the income level was there,
and then at the same time my wife was
pregnant. So we kind of made the decision
that okay, I have paternity leave coming
up so during the paternity leave I'm
going to of course be a dad, but i'm also
going to see how the business works,
while I don't have the police schedule
pulling me away from it. It was pretty clear
within about the first week, what that if
I didn't have to deal with the police
schedule that this was really
going to go, yeah. And you commented
earlier when we were talking that the
sensation of being outside a bar at
what time in the morning? Oh yeah, stand
out here at two and three in the morning
work, that's that's why I really started
trying to find something other than you
know doing security jobs.
So the security job you were doing too
supplement your Police salary,
Right, because I've been with Raleigh
Police for nine years, and then I had six
years of experience elsewhere and I was
making maybe 50 grand a year! Yeah, which
you know if you live in the city of
Raleigh and you're making 50,000 a year
you're pretty much right at the poverty line.
It's crazy. You've got a house and all
this, and then you know it's constantly
being called in for court on my days off,
on having to work extra duty jobs. Like
you know sixteen, twenty, thirty hours a
month extra duty, three hours
at a time, and it's never desirable. And that was
after doing all these jobs. Right, yeah!
That's when I started doing this as a
side business, and then that kind of
pointed me in the.... well I'm doing this is
a side business, I probably ought to find
out like what are the laws, what are the
regulations, and what are all this, and at
that time there weren't any. Right so
there was really nothing, still in a
debate. Right I mean you've given, there is
licensing and SCC rulings, but they're
still like those ones about distance to
ground. Well there's a lot, it's a lot
more clear-cut now. There's still a few
like gray areas that they're working on,
I guess on a legislative, the lawmakers
are working to kind of fine tune those.
Right, but it's a lot more clear-cut now
and you have a license. Right I do, I do.
You have to have a license from the FAA
which is called, for us it's a called
Part 107 license. Ok, so part 107 is
just the law that it's the statute
number, that defines like commercial UAV
operations. Part 101 is the law that
defines the hobby operations, and within
part 107 there's a bunch of like
sub-sections, like point 29, which defines
you know, daylight, when you can operate,
that sort of thing. Oh so there's actual
licenses based on time of day that you
can...? Well you have a license, and then you
can get waivers, so you have to apply for
a waiver. So if you want to fly at night,
really any time after the official
sunset, you have to have a waiver that
frees you from the night operation
requirements. You have to apply to the
FAA, they balance that. You have to submit
to them that you have the ability to
mitigate certain risks, like there's a
lot of stuff like night illusions. Night
illusions? Like things that
your eyes do at night that can cause
issues. Like if you're watching, so you
see a flashing light off in the distance.
How you can determine that, that
flashing light is moving towards you, away
from you, stationary, now there's
different things you think about.
Yeah, but it's things
you have to understand and you think about you
have to mitigate, because you have to give way
to manned aircraft. So you see a flashing
light coming towards you, you should land,
and to and at night it's not as easy to
determine, you know, during the day you
hear a helicopter, see a helicopter, you
look up and see. Ya. But at night,
especially, if flying around the city,
there's flashing red lights on top of
every building. Right! You know, cell phone
towers, all that stuff have flashing
lights on them, so you have to learn
techniques to be able to look at that
and distinguish. Is that something, is
it coming towards me? Do I need to take
action. Have you ever seen something
super freaky in the air? Um probably, this
like scariest thing I've seen for me, is
I had some birds trying to attack the
drone. Oh and I mean when you see a bird
up close and personal, you know to where
you can like see his eyes, yeah through
the screen, yeah, it's pretty alarming!
Especially when you don't know he's
there, like you're watching the drone and
you don't see it, and then all of a
sudden trying to attack.
Right they were they were actually
trying to attack, it was, I was shooting a
shopping center in like Holly Springs
and I didn't realize there was a
landfill behind the shopping centre, and
there's all these seagulls that are just
circling a landfill, and they kind of all
came around in a big wave, and it was all
I could do just to break that full-on
aggressive diving at the drone. That was
one of these scarier things, haven't
really had any like close calls. So when you say
scary, because, because.. Obviously not
scary for me, but scary for losing my equipment.
But also may be tapping into a psychological
you know like Hitchcock connotation, yeah!
Exactly like birds.. yeah!
Oh God, yeah, I mean you know losing your
equipment is obviously a big fear. My
biggest fear is not losing the equipment.
It's the equipment comes down on to
somebody, or something. So and that's the
reason we don't fly over people's heads.
Right, I know you've seen our work like
at the races, and we never go
over people. We stay over you know the
buildings or fields or what ever, we put
a longer zoom lens, and so it'll look
like we're... Yeah! Over something, but will
be .. Because there's been a
couple drone crashes into race participants.
People, right, recently I saw
on the news, where a groom is being sued
for crashing his drone into a wedding
guest, at his wedding! yes at his
wedding. I don't know if he was flying it
or someone he hired or one of his buddies... but yeah,
the groom himself is being sued!
I couldn't imagine. That's crazy! You know
being hired to shoot a wedding and now
the groom is being sued! Right, yeah, I
kind of refrained from doing weddings
with drones because I don't want, I
really don't want to be attacked by a
bride when my drone is... because they're
really loud, they're not quiet. This thing
sounds like a really loud.. like beehive!
Right, so I don't want that buzz around a
wedding you know, beautiful serene
mountaintop wedding, and then you hear
this buzzing! You may have a
good point! What are.. because you are
utilizing your drone photography for quite a
lot of applications. Like what are the
main applications? And what are you doing?
The main applications for, probably the
main applications for us, would be photo
and video for a number of things we do.
Commercials, I get called to do a
lot of commercial real estate. Right. I'll
do a ton of residential real estate. I do
a lot of like commercial type, you know
this building, we want to you know try to
bring tenants into a high-rise or
whatever, so we want some nice pretty
photos of it at sunset, or you know for
what so do a lot of like commercial
applications there, we do like tons
of real estate, we do some photogrammetry.
Right, special events. Yes.
Special events are iffy because you
really need a lot of like safety buffers
in place to be able to do that. Right, so
those are kind of, you know a little
nerve-wracking, but they're there, it's
awesome. Like we did the City of Oaks
Marathon this year. Right. And we were
live streaming to a Jumbotron straight
from the drone. That's cool! I'm going to
talk to Endurance about maybe doing that
at Bull City, or something like that, or we
talked about it, but it never, and we
weren't able to make it happen.
So you've got the drone up in
the air, you've got a footage, and it's
live feeding into a Jumbotron. Right, we
can live stream that straight to a
Jumbotron. Wow, that's amazing thanks, so
much Travis. Check us out here next time on
AdoramaTV, and do not forget there's tons
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