Skyviews: Tiny choppers take bird's-eye view photos

OREM — They may be toy-size, but these helicopters are no toys.

A new business that offers aerial photography from miniature remote-controlled helicopter cameras, Skyviews of Orem, specializes in giving clients a bird's-eye view.

Unlike aerial photography shot from high-altitude planes or full-size helicopters, Skyviews' photos are taken close-in at an angle, not straight down.

The diminutive, four-foot choppers can fly from 20 to 500 feet high, the ceiling for remote-controlled aircraft. (Five hundred feet is as low as a full-size aircraft can fly.)

Pontoons on the crafts are of contrasting colors so Hasson can tell at a distance which way it's pointed.

"We have been especially valuable to such clients as commercial builders and brokers, cities, golf courses and resorts and upper-end residential real estate," said general manager Crystal Ferguson. "Photos of entire communities or developments can aid in research and development as well as marketing and sales. But our capabilities are useful and profitable in hundreds of different applications."

"We get some funny requests, but they're usually just joking around," Skyviews USA founder and pilot Mark Hasson said.

His main business focuses on the real estate industry.

Hasson founded the company in 2004 but in August sold out to Beverly Dickson. He remained as pilot. Dickson and her husband, K-Tec and Blend-Tec founder Tom Dickson, provide the financial backing. While Hasson is operating miniature whirlybirds, Tom Dickson is building other kinds of spinning machines — mixers and blenders.

Skyviews operates only in the northwestern United States — from Utah to Washington state — using digital cameras with wide-angle lenses. The technology has been around some 20 years, but Hasson personally modified these birds to handle the workload.

Skyviews operates three choppers. Two are electric-powered with fullyautomatic digital, still cameras mounted in front. The third has a gas engine, which is powerful enough to lift a 35mm movie camera high overhead, Hasson said. While Hasson pilots the helicopters, his son, Mike Hasson, controls the cameras and shoots the pictures.

A downlink allows the camera operator to see what the camera sees on a computer screen inside an SUV. When the image is right, the photographer shoots the picture.

As a precaution, Hasson refuses to fly the helicopters over people.

Many of Skyviews' sales come from people who see the crew working on location. Other sales come from working the phones, from referrals or from shooting "on spec" and then selling the photos to property owners or developers. The company also has a Web site to promote its services, www.skyviewsusa.com.

Additionally, the company has talked to law enforcement about the potential of mounting an infrared lens on the camera for night-time surveillance, said Dickson.

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