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| photography courtesy of Mustang Aeronautical |
While aerial photos are as old as the Wright brothers, custom aerial photographs of first, second, and vacation homes are the latest must-have. The photos allow families a unique way to memorialize their homestead(s), not to mention create extreme Christmas cards. Owners with homes under construction often commission a monthly flight over their property for a visual timeline of the construction process. Cost for each mission within a 50-mile radius of Dallas: $400 with Addison-airport based Sonny Lacey of Mustang Aeronautical.
So what’s wrong with free web sites such as Google Earth or Zillow? “Those photos may not be up-to-date, and may in fact be several years old,” says Lacey, whose grandfather was also an aerial photographer on the Gulf Coast. “What I do is oblique, and I can get better angles.”
Lacey’s camera zooms in on gables, shadows, and landscape from an altitude of 1,000 feet (the legal limit). He’s also, on occasion, a bit of a private eye. A client hired him to catch illegal dumpers on a property. Lacey caught the perpetrators red-handed. “I time-stamped the picture, burned it to a CD, and handed it over,” Lacey says.
