How should a photographer weigh subcontracting drone work against getting Part 107 certified
Take a photographer who has had to turn down four aerial requests this quarter because they only shoot ground. Say two of those agents went and hired a full package elsewhere, so the photographer lost the ground work too, not just the aerial add-on, roughly $1,100 of ground work per lost job. There are two ways to fix that gap. Option one, subcontract. A certified pilot might quote $250 for a standard aerial set, about 20 stills and a 60 to 90 second edited clip, billed out at $400 as an add-on. That nets $150 per job with no equipment, no test, no insurance line. On roughly 22 shoots a month with maybe 6 taking the add-on, that is $900 a month at essentially zero risk. Option two, get certified and buy equipment. Part 107 runs $175 at a testing center plus study time. A drone capable of work worth putting a name on runs $2,000 to $2,800. Insurance for aircraft and liability tends to run around $840 a year. Call it $3,800 to start, against which the operator keeps the full $400 minus about 45 minutes of extra edit time, or roughly $2,400 a month gross on the same volume. The variable that decides it is usually the FAA side, not the math. Airspace authorizations near a regional airport can be a routine phone-app request or a real scheduling headache depending on proximity and how often a shoot falls inside that radius. If it is closer to routine, doing it in-house pays back fast. If it turns into a delay on every third shoot, subcontracting to someone who already manages that relationship is the better call.
