Outer Sky Imaging

Topsail Insider Intro and Coming Up!

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Welcome to Topsail Insider, where you can hear all about the businesses and events in the beautiful coastal towns in the greater Topsail area of North Carolina. Coming up Today we're talking to Mr. Rich Sorais, owner of Outer Sky Imaging. He's a drone photographer who is FAA and NCDOT certified and he's fully insured, offering real estate photography and videography and advertising media production. And now he works with incredible new AI software to get your roof and home inspections done. Solar panel surveys and insurance claims performed safely and in about 10 minutes. He has a background in photojournalism. He's worked for NASA and the Space Shuttle Program. He's surfed around the world and he knows his way around a recording studio. Join me and Rich today on Topsail Insider.

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Intro to Rich Surace and Outer Sky Imaging

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Hello everyone and welcome to Topsail Insider. My name is Christa and I am your host. Today we are talking to Rich Serais. He is the owner of Outer Sky Imaging. Welcome Rich and thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you, Christa. I'm happy to be here. My husband and I, we were at the annual Topsail Chamber of Commerce holiday party and we ended up sharing a table with you and your wife. And, listeners, when we were chatting, Rich was talking about photojournalism and NASA and the space shuttle program and Microsoft and I love all things science and technology and especially anything about space. So he really had my attention and I knew that I wanted him to sit with me and talk with me on Topsail Insider one day and here we are finally. So we'll talk about his business first. But stick around for the interesting path that he took from Florida to Sneeds Ferry, and all of the space shuttle program and all that in between. So just in the short amount of time, Rich, that I have known you, so we're talking just like three months, you've already added something that's really cool to your business that we will get into heavily. But first, I just want to talk about the basics of Outer Sky Imaging can you tell our listeners what Outer Sky Imaging offers? So, Outer Sky Imaging is really a commercial photography venture, but it also includes videography and aerial photography as well. I've actually started out thinking I was going to be doing certain things, and as I started to progress and meet different people, And as time went on and the economy changed a little bit, I started realizing that I really have the most fun doing events and doing advertising media photo shoots. So when I get to do that, I get to combine not only the photography, But the videography, I'm actually working with the customers and setting a scene, doing sort of a photo journalistic approach because I have that photo journalistic background. And it allows me to approach them in a way like, when I come to your worksite, ignore me, I'm a fly on the wall and just keep working. And I'm just going to snap the pictures that I think are telling the story. So I like to tell that story about a business when I do their advertising media. Of course, they rely on me to say, here's what we'd like to do, but what ideas do you have? What would you do? Like, how would you arrange five trucks and trailers and a 10 man crew? And then how would you photograph that? How would you video that? And what would you include in it? So to me, that was, when you get to do that type of work, I'm doing everything that's commercial photography. I'm doing Not only the actual photography itself, shooting the images, shooting the video, but then I go back and I do the editing and I try to keep it attractive and display their message, with calls to action. that way their business, they can take those clips, whether they're 30 seconds or 10 seconds or 20 seconds, and they can put them up on their social media and they can. Put them up on their websites. They can just have them on there, like a link to them, with a QR code. So people can see who they are and what they're about. Why don't

Previous Clients

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you tell me about one of your clients that you had, give us an example of who the client was and how you worked with them. It's like my first event coverage shot. Was the Marine Raider Foundation. So the Marine Raiders, they do, multiple events throughout the year. They host a lot of 1K and 5Ks. My drone's too big to fly over people. what I did I got creative and my friends have golf carts, so I took my gimbal. It's like a tripod, but it holds the camera in a way that it actually keeps it completely steady and allows you full control of movement, so I could be on the back of a golf cart and flying down the road and it's going to be completely smooth. So I, followed the path, and then I stopped at different places and got them coming and going, and then of course, Everybody wants to see themselves coming across that finish line. So I made sure that I got all of those shots as well there was one runner who was so fast. That we could almost not get the golf cart going fast enough, so I was, so we had to speed way up and we literally came across the finish line at the same time, but I had it perfectly in focus. you got the shot. Yeah. And then of course there's the ceremony stuff after, I took a lot of photos as well, and what was really cool was that later on in a year, they actually used one of those finish line, start line photos. And their yearly newsletter that goes out nationally. Yes., you can see the newsletter and you pop that open and you see your photography, boom, right there. It really feels great. Yeah, I bet. And as far as the commercial production that you're doing for the companies, tell me about a client that you've had where you filmed. Are they construction sites or the home building sites? What kind of clients are you getting for that? Yeah. So right now, one of the clients was first time done right home improvement and they are a really popular, well groomed home improvement company that does a lot of work like all around Topsail so they came to me said, Hey, would you be willing to come out and do a drone shoot of our whole crew, with all the trucks lined up they had an idea, but they didn't know where to go with it. So I said, you know what, here's what I would do. Again, approach it like a photo journalist. And then it got down to the date that we were going to do the truck shoot, the actual crew shoot. And here's the part that got sticky was that when you're involved drone or you're a business and you're trying to use like a local park. There's a lot of laws against not being able to shoot, do commercial ventures inside a county park, inside a state park. It's just not allowed. There's all these ordinances and restrictions. And you know all these laws? I do now. Oh, you do now. A little education had to happen. After pulling my hair out for trying to find a location that was legal and no one was going to run us off or, or fine us, I went. You know what? I'm in the Chamber of Commerce. Sneeds Ferry Shrimp Festival. Fairgrounds. I bet you if I go up there and ask them, they might let me just come in there and they might charge me something. But that's fine, I contacted them and of course, they said, come on, you just come on in anytime you want, you do your photo shoot. So we set the date and we went in and we did the shoot lined up all the trucks, in a semi circle and we did multiple scenes. So like for every time we did a arrange the vehicles, they all came out of the trucks with holding their tools up, they all were like waving at the drone as it flew by, I did a thing called parallax videography where like you're actually. It's a very cinematic approach. Yeah. So I try to do that. And like the standard pullbacks and the pull ins just to give people the idea of, Hey, this first time done right is not a tiny operation. It's not one guy with a truck. They have a whole crew of people that can help you, right? They're a professional organization and they wanted to capture that. So then you take all of that, that you've gathered, it sounds like days of work here, and then you go back and you edit that yourself, right? How long did that video end up being? We agreed on, I said, I'll do, I'll get like at least four video clips of 30 seconds with and without background music, depending on, we could have dubbed in narration, but people get shy about that. They don't like to talk. They opted to just do some background music or no music. of course, it's all rendered down and smooth and quick little two, three second clips. Like the scene keeps changing, and the taglines keep popping in to try to get your attention, keep your attention. So it ended up being several days of editing. Where did you learn all of this editing? Your background is vast and this is a new part of your background that I haven't heard yet. The silly part about my background is going back to with the video editing and the videography goes back to let's just say probably around the year 2000 when I had been on like Three surf trips a year for four or five years. So I had 10 years of footage, not just surf trips, but surfing in Typhoon Lagoon and stuff like that. Cause we would get a bunch of people to do that every year. It was just a lot of fun. And I had hours and hours of video that I compiled down into the clips that I wanted. And then I put that all together and made like an hour and a half long surf movie. So this is one of those things, Rich, that you taught yourself. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Totally. Totally. Like just the passion that I wanted to document all these crazy surf places I went to and all of the friends that I shared it with. And I just wanted to make sure that everybody could remember that.

Commercial Photography for Investors and Developers

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So as a drone photographer, you're doing the drone photography and the handheld photography as well for real estate? Correct. And then do you shoot lots and land photography? I have. I've actually been working with some folks that were like pretty big commercial property investors and think that, they're right here in the state, but there could be this huge outfit in California. That is selling 5 million, 3 million restaurant properties all over the country. So sometimes they'll just call you up and they'll say, Hey, I've got a photo shoot for you. and when you talk commercial photography, it's a very different approach. There may not even be a sign up on the lot yet. But what they're trying to show is they're showcasing the growth and the location and the area around it. So you go as high as you're allowed to legally fly, as far away as you're allowed to legally get from a location, which is line of sight. And then you're basically taking photos of all the cardinal points all around the location, showing what's around that business location. And then they show the roads. And then they also write down the traffic volumes on the roads. You want to show traffic. You want to see like the roads all jammed up with cars because. Gotcha. Because you want to show it's a busy area. Okay. And what they do is they take your images and they don't even really want you to do a lot of post processing. They want to take the best image they can that shows the right, the best angle. And then they'll pinpoint every business. And every bit of infrastructure around that place and tell you like what their volumes are. They almost make a poster out of that. And of course they should have a poster of what the final building would look like. It's a very lucrative thing to do commercial photography

Construction Progression Photography

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like that. Tell me about the construction progress. These are long term projects, so I'm assuming you're going out multiple times throughout the process. So that's one of my newer offerings. I'm always looking for some new workflow that could take advantage of using drones. with construction, there's so many different things that, let's say if you're a project manager and you're remote, and then you have to keep an eye on this development. Progress, like every week and then you need to plan different things, different trucks, different work crews that go in there. Maybe you need a stockpile of culvert stuff. Maybe you need a bunch of riprap or fill rock or something. So rather than them going out there and driving around these large construction sites, all you really need to do is hire a drone guy to go out and fly over the property and take photos and tell them what you want. And they can fly over the property and they can show you the progress on a weekly basis. It could be a bi weekly basis, it could be a monthly basis. whatever the speed of the project is. And this takes you how long? if you had to run out there once a month? Once a month, it would probably take like 20 minutes. We can also, with a lot of, some of the more commercial drones, you can do a thing called autonomous flight. Where you're actually program the flight height and you program the pathway and you can just turn on the video camera and it'll just go, basically, you're not flying the drone at that point. It's following the path that you set it on. Yeah. That's nice. Yeah. And there's different types of that. There's like the 2D and the 3D mapping. The part about construction progress is that. Sometimes they need survey work. if you're not a licensed surveyor in the state of North Carolina, you can't be a drone guy and survey land. It's not legal to do that.

Post Production

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After you've collected all of your footage, what can you tell me about what happens after the shoot, the post production and what the final products look like when they're delivered to your customers? do you do all the editing yourself? And is everything digital? And if so, how are you delivering these large files to your customers? That's a good question because they do get rather large. So typically the most common mechanism for transferring large files is Dropbox. Dropbox. Okay. I figured that might be the case. That's what we use too. It's simple. It's easy. So I will take multiple photos. let's say it's a realty shoot that I provide a set of photos that I call web, which is perfectly formatted for putting on websites or MLS listing. And then there's one for print. Which is a lot larger file, a lot more detail, so when you print it, it would look fantastic. And then, of course, the first one that you get would be proofs. The proofs, of course, are watermarked and they're super low res, but they're still high enough quality that you can see, you're able to review the photo work and then say, yes, this looks great. let's final this up. I usually always provide a set of print formatted photos, a set of photos optimized for web. And then for the video, it's the same thing. Nobody really can stream or even wants to put, full sized, any kind of video on their website because it'll just, it's so long to load too long to load too large. You can't really buffer it correctly. So a lot of times it's really just goes from, it could be a 4k video at 30 frames a second. Now it's only like a 1080p. It's just straight up HD and it's a lot more compressed, but it still looks really smooth and it looks really high quality because almost every video ends up being, if it's going to be streamed like that. The larger files that are great for printing, those are too heavy to load properly on the websites as well. Yeah. Yeah. You would totally notice like if someone tried to put those up, instead of it just popping up on the screen, it would take like maybe five, 10 seconds for the photo to show up. Yeah. It's too much data. Yeah. And that's when customers go somewhere else. yeah. Exactly. I learned that from another

Passion for the Long-form Video Commercial Production

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interview. It seems to me that you really enjoy doing the long form commercials. What is it about that that you enjoy so much? Is it just you get to direct it and produce all aspects of it? Yeah, it allows me to be technical and ultimately creative at the same time. And I'm also taking the shots because composition, when you're doing that type of stuff is so important. And you could say, I want to shoot, this photo of this crew working, but do you really have an eye for composition? Do you really know what the flow, like how to really zoom in and make it tight? Can you work your camera gear enough to get rid of the stuff in the background that, try to make it focus on the thing that you're trying to show? There's so much more that goes into it. It's not like you're just going out there and snapping a bunch of photos. Yeah. Every workflow that I have has huge different settings and changes, not only on the camera side and the drone side. If you're not a trained photographer or a trained videographer, you just, you won't know how to do it. You don't have enough experience to do those kinds of things. So you might get lucky and get it right, but my workflows are tested. I've developed them over years. I know how cameras work and I know how to get, achieve the type of shot that I'm trying to get. When I go out to take a shot, even if it's a scenic shot, I have a purpose in life. I may have been to that spot 10 times or 15 times. When I go out there, I'm gonna take a picture of something that somebody else is. They be look at, where was that? I haven't seen that before. Like, how did you see that? It's that's just the way I am. I'm gonna find something in the imagery that it's gonna look really different to you. It's gonna compel you a little bit. That's what I try to do. This really goes back to your journalism, background when you went to school for journalism or photojournalism too. So you're bringing all that to this career

Importance of Being FAA and NC DOT Certified and Fully Insured

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as well. One last note I want to hit before we move on is I want to talk about the importance of being FAA certified, North Carolina DOT certified, and you're fully insured as well, as a drone photographer doing freelance work for real estate companies, and I guess any other company for that matter. Why is that so important, and do you feel like that's not being looked at carefully enough these days? When you start getting into drones, for some people, it seems it's really more of a toy. It's a hobby. It's a toy. It's Hey, look, I'm flying this thing around. I can take pictures and videos. the first time you put that drone up, as you start to learn that there's all kinds of ways to get in trouble with a drone. Not only losing control of it, making sure you can keep control of it, knowing the weather conditions. If it's too windy, people get a lot of flyaways and stuff like that. But technically it's an aircraft. It's a remotely controlled aircraft. So let's say if for some reason, especially around here with all the low flying military aircraft, what if you're out at the beach and here comes an Osprey or a couple of, Blackhawks or, Cobra, anything could be coming down to beach. If you don't know the rules, you could get in their way, and you could cause an accident. So main thing is that FAA rules, when you go through that training, it's basically ground school. So like you have the same training that a pilot has, but you don't get that flight school later. So you're understanding all the different safety features and things that are considerations when it comes to aviation. that's extremely important. There's a lot of rules around that, around altitude, heights, checking the weather, pre flight checklists, visually inspect the drone. A lot of people don't think you need to do that, but you do. In fact, if you say you were just working at a site somewhere and an FAA guy just, showed up, he'd probably say, where's your pre flight checklist? And if you don't have that, it's not looking too good for you. What are the repercussions? Do they fine you? Do they take your drone away? What happens if the company has hired someone that's not FAA certified? So a good example would be like, a lot of businesses when they hire you, nobody asks to see your FAA credentials. Nobody looks to see if you have insurance. That's one thing about drone piloting, if you don't carry like a million dollars in liability, not a good idea. So you have to be insured, you have to be certified, and if let's say somebody hires you or hi let's say they hire anybody down the street and they hire them and they're not certified and somehow it's in restricted airspace, somebody sees it and picks it up or whatever, reports it, they investigate it, they're going to find that drone operator, but they're going to find the person who hired them like ten times more. Okay. Yeah. So it could be as high as a 10, 000 fine. Wow. Yeah. And then there's also another certification called NCDOT, which is North Carolina has some of the strictest drone rules in the entire country. And what they do is they're more geared toward protecting wildlife, private property and privacy and even like using drones for criminal purposes. They really don't want that going on. So there's huge restrictions around flying anywhere near a prison, or flying over certain locations. Yeah. Yeah. Wildlife sanctuaries is a no. You're not allowed to fly over wildlife sanctuaries? No, you're not supposed to do that. A good example would be like Lee Island. It's just another beach to a lot of people, but to the Audubon Society and to the state, it's a wildlife sanctuary. It's been deemed that. Yeah. Yeah. So that means there's, I think, I couldn't remember the exact number, but there's a large number of protected waterfowl and bird life out there that live on that island. So imagine if, you just want that killer drone shot and you come in there and you start taking all these pictures and here's all this wildlife. They're going, what the heck is that? so you're threatening a little bit. Oh, I see. Endangering them, it's just being a responsible drone pilot and understanding where you can and can't fly. And there probably would still be people that would do it anyway.

Hazards and Restrictions of Flying Drones Over Festivals and Mass Public Gatherings

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So what about flying over? So we have large festivals here that we love, like the shrimp festival, for instance, what are the rules about flying over large groups of people? Yeah. So large groups of people. It's a kind of a no, no, but people still try to do it. Cause they want that shot. Now let's say if it's a well known festival and an exact date that, I couldn't put in a waiver to the FAA, but it's not going to be an instant waiver. It would be like, I have to write up this whole thing. Like I'm attaching a parachute to my drone and I've done all those other precautions and I'm not going to, I'm not going to hover over the people directly. I'm going to be on the side. I'm going to be zoomed in. They might approve that, but there's a thing that the FAA came out with about like changing the rules, about flying over people and the, especially over a mass public gathering, which, how do you define that? So without full authorization, like a waiver, a direct waiver from the FAA, you really can't do that because they, what they, part of the law that a lot of people don't understand is they had a thing called a declaration of compliance where let's say if you have a DJI drone, DJI has to publish to the FAA. A declaration of compliance that says this drone is a Category 2. That means that it has a certain amount of kinetic energy that it might hit you with if it crashed into your head at a festival. guess what? There's not one drone out there that has a declaration of compliance to fly over people. Oh, okay. If you go to their website, you can't find one. Can you fly out and around the event, like shooting diagonally at the event, as long as you don't over it? FAA wording on the rules are really interesting because if the intent is to cover the event, you're still covering the event. Even if you think you're on the fringe of the event, the whole purpose is to cover the event. So you're bending the rules. It's like saying, using a drone for commercial purposes. I just bought a drone, so I'm going to do a thing for my buddy and put it up on Facebook. what's your intention of putting it up on Facebook? Is it to promote a business? Technically, as soon as you put that on Facebook, you're now flying commercially. I did not know that. It's not enforced enough, but I don't know how you would enforce it. But now that also there's another thing. As of March 16th, the drones now have to emit a signal. That's like a wifi beacon or a Bluetooth five signal. Let's say another aircraft is nearby. They'll know that drone's there, if it's law enforcement, they could be like on the ground and they could read your signal back up to the festival example. Yeah. Your drone is up there. You don't have a waiver and you're flying over the people and the police on the ground see that? And they get your signal. They report you. You're gonna get a letter. that was just recently enforced by the FAA to have a re Is that something you have to install on your individual drones? Everyone's got to go out and get a device or is that after 2021, they were built in. Oh. Anything pre 2021, you can, there's some companies that sell a thing called like a drone tag or some remote broadcast module that you attach. With like industrial Velcro to the drone and it puts out that signal. Okay. So people have options. They didn't, just shut everybody down. they made it, they tried to make it reasonable. Yeah, it sounds reasonable. But I believe the FAA didn't take it to the next step and really, truly define it in a way that most people can understand what's allowed and what's not allowed when it comes to flying over people part.

New Automated Visual Home Inspection Using Artificial Intelligence

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Alrighty. Let's now discuss this new exciting direction that you're heading into is the automated visual home inspection using artificial intelligence. Did I get that right? Yes. Okay. That's correct. Tell me all about this and how you got started and where you're going to take this. There are some companies out there that offer solutions. They have software that can take the aerial imaging and they have AI models that can not only do calculations and measurements from the photos, but can also do damage detection, can also take the measurements and design solar panels and do solar surveys to see like how good is your house? What's its solar rating? what could it yield you in power and how optimal would it be? Or maybe you're not, maybe you have too many trees around your house or something. there's a company that offers that I was working with them to do just insurance roof inspections. they would hire me to go out and I would go up there with my drone and fly an automated pattern over the house that they provided. And then, literally while the drone is landing, it's already sending the photos into them. they get the photos. And in one day turnaround, they can provide a report to the insurance company and say this is the roof inspection, there's no damage. And this is the damage. And this is where you need to, it needs to be fixed and things like that. It started out with the roof inspections and then they moved on to the solar and then they also have a set piece of it that does on the ground home inspection. Any home inspector is going to have a list of things that he goes through the house and looks at. So it's a punch list that like any inspector would follow. So let's say let's one case scenario, like one type of software, drone solution, slash, on the ground solution can cover five industries, right? So you've got insurance, restoration companies that do damage restoration, solar and roofing, and then home inspection. So using the same software, let's say you have, if you were a solar company and you send your guys out to do an inspection or do a survey, they may have to go up on a roof and climb the roof and measure things and take readings. And they, look at how the angle North, East, South, and do a solar survey that way, where a drone can fly that flight in about probably 10 minutes. 15 minutes, and then provide you a full solar survey report. No one's having to climb on the roof. no one went up on the roof. Risked their lives. Same thing for roof inspections. Drone goes up, takes all the measurements, looks for all the damage, highlights all the damage. The AI detection has been trained to see all kinds of damage, like from a million or a billion models that have been fed through the system. So it knows what damage looks like. And then you can go back and annotate, what that is, why, what it actually is, and you can confirm the damage, right? So the difference is you're not sending up your drone, videotaping, sending that off for someone to analyze. And determine the AI's analyzing it and telling you where the problems are already. or designing like your solar system, your solar panels, placements, To make them the most optimal. So you're eliminating a whole lot of time here. Yes. And where I come in there is that I can train or teach people or consult people how to do this, or I can actually be their pilot. work elbow to elbow with them and be their pilot guy. Or if they want to become legally drone certified, they can do it all themselves. using the same software that I've been working with. It's just a matter of, does a home inspector guy want to be a drone guy too? Probably maybe half of them would. Does a roofing guy want to be a drone guy too? maybe not. Maybe they just want to focus on getting the roof done properly. Managing their crews and things like that. Scheduling work where they just have five quotes they need to do. They can just send out a drone pilot and it can all get done like in a half an hour per job. Tell me how that works with the software. Okay, so it's a subscription. So if you had one of these companies I described, like an insurance company, you would pay a monthly subscription to access the software. You would? Or the insurance company? They would. They would, Okay. They would pay that. And then if they hired me as a pilot, it'd be a separate fee. Okay. To go out and fly the jobs or whatever they have. the software is not in the computer system that you're using to run the drone. A piece of it is. It is. There is an app right now. It uses iOS, so it uses Apple. You can use a phone or a tablet. You download the app to that, you attach your controller to that device, and you can fly it that way, automatically fly it that way. Or, in the newer DJI, with a DJI RC Pro 3 controllers, their app runs on that now too. So you can just use the DJI controller as long as it's the right one and put their app on it and it all communicates over the internet and downloads and uploads through there. So that's so cool. Yeah. So they call you, Hey, I need you to go run your drone on this house. You're using this software to figure out the mapping that's going to have to happen over top of this house. It figures all that out itself. A lot of times, it's really interesting, the back end of it, let's say if you were an insurance company or roofing company, you just put in a home address and it walks you through defining the job. And it walks you through defining obstacles around the house. And it walks you through safe heights for flying. And then once you put in all the parameters, it saves it and it's ready to go. How long does that take? 10 minutes. Wow. You can literally set up a job in 10 minutes and schedule it. And then when someone logs in with their app, they can see all the jobs that are ready to, that are queued up and they can pull it down and they can go out to the site and they can run it. After that, your job is done. You bring the drone in, pack it up and go home. You're done. Pretty much. Yeah. Unless if it's remote, I have to wait till I get back to the house to upload the photos. Okay. I was recently contacted by one of the home inspectors that I know that I met through some of the local business meetups and he asked me if I would come and speak to their home inspector group in New Bern, it's basically the InterNACHI group for all of Eastern North Carolina. And, talk about utilizing drones in, the inspection business. And I said, yeah, I'd love to do that. It'd be great. So I'm hoping to learn more about what they do, explain to them, the rules of the road for using drones. Yeah. See if they want to become drone certified to do it themselves, that's great. Or I can buddy up with, any inspector that wants me to, and, help them with the outside and the roof parts of their home inspections to help them save time and money. Explain the InterNACHI group. It's an international group of home inspectors that adheres to a higher standard of home inspection. Gotcha. So you're going to be speaking in Newbern for them? in April. Okay.

Personal History: Photojournalism, NASA, Microsoft

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Now let's get into your personal history a bit, or a lot, because I find it completely fascinating, and find out what led you to the Topsail area. Doing what you do now, but let's go back to college. So you said you were in Florida, you're going to college for photo journalism and journalism. Tell me what happened with the journalism. Yeah. So I was in my third year of journalism and, working with, I guess the photo journalism professor at the college was also the photo editor of the Florida today newspaper. So that was his teaching was his part time job, basically. So he really liked my work and actually saw something that I had done. And he goes, I want that negative. What was it? It was what we call a working man photo. So when they, sometimes the reporters and the photographers, Would just go out and go find somebody working on something and take pictures of him working and then ask him what he does. It was like a feature, working man. So there was a guy in Cocoa Beach that called, Sloan Skates and he used to have this huge, step van full of rental roller skates. And Cocoa beach has these huge sidewalks and he would rent out skates to people who wanted to roller skate the Cocoa beach sidewalks. And they'd just be able to just rent them for an hour and just go up and down Cocoa beach for a couple of miles. And then, just turn the skates in. So he had this cool dog in the back and his shot, he had skates hanging in all these different colors from the sides of the van inside. And he was just in there on the phone, like a silhouette, but had, I got the whole back of the truck with him sitting there talking to people. And it was just like the perfect working man photo. So they put it on a front cover of TGIF magazine for Florida today. Yeah. So that was my first cover shot. You were saying that because of that shot, you felt like, wow, this is going to really take me to a new level. Yeah. It's inspiring. So you get all inspired by that and you get all this, momentum behind it. And then while I was in my third year, there was a cooperative offering with Florida Today. And I'm like, Oh, I, I know, I, I've already got cover shots. I've got to get this. So it's all optimistic about it. And then it turned out someone else got it. And I was like, I know who she is and I know she's really good. So she deserved that. And some of my other friends from back then that I surfed with, they went on to do commercial photography as well and worked for, Corvette catalogs and also NASA. Oh wow. Worked on a space center taking photos for NASA for years. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. And it's one of those things where for me, that was a turning point when I turned down for the co op program, I was like, I need to reevaluate what I'm going to do because, I know I'm good at it, but there's a lot of competition out there. And I just didn't, if I wanted to do that, it got disheartened right there. So that took me back to school again for computer programming. Okay. Okay. I didn't know you went to school for computer programming. I was wondering how you transitioned, what seems to be quite easily. Yeah. So I jammed a two year computer programming degree into a one year. Gotcha. All right. Doubled up and just, Buried myself in computer programming. And before I even finished that, I already had a job at an insurance agency software company in Florida. Then I ended up being a PC technician for this big shop there. And then from there, I ended up putting a lot of personal computers into the NASA headquarters building. Who asked you to do that? Hey, Rich, this is NASA calling. could you just come help us with some computer systems? So let's just say that. Yeah. Like the person that I was working for in Florida was very instrumental in getting inexpensive computer equipment and NASA likes to spend only as little bit of money as they possibly can. So he had an offering to NASA, like I can supply X amount of computers to everybody in and out here at Kennedy for this, for this price per machine. And they loved it. So we're hand building computers and we're burning them in and we're bringing them out to NASA. And then it got to the point where I'd spend half a week building them and then a half week deploying them into people's offices. And then everybody at NASA was Hey, that's the computer guy. Get him in here. We need to ask him a question, So I was all over the headquarters building, getting dragged in every direction, working with all these NASA project managers and office folks and, So it was really a fun time for me to be able to do that. But then I all of a sudden got a tap on the shoulder from someone at Grumman Technical Services and they said, do you want to come work for us? And I'm like, where do I sign? because that's a big difference from working for a small computer shop. Yeah. So I, of course I got hired. The funny thing was they hired me to work on PCs and then they didn't get the contract. Cause they do that a lot of times, the DOD contractors, they'll hire people before they actually have the work, but they're trying to get the work. They're anticipating that they're going to have the work. They can say, we have these people hired, already ready to go. What happened was they didn't get it. So then next thing you know, I'm working on the launch system for the space shuttle. Incredible. Yeah. Fixing electronics. Which is more fun, right? Yeah. I learned so much and I didn't, I can't say I was self taught then because I learned everything I needed to know about electronics from a lot of the ex Navy techs that were out there. They took me under their wing and they just taught me everything they could teach me. Incredible. Yeah. So I learned electronics there. I really want to do more software. So then I saw these other guys that were the engineers doing the test engineering, and I'm like, okay, I really want to do that. And they're like, you don't have a degree. And I was like, yeah, I can do it. Let me prove to you I can do it. And sure enough, next thing you know, I'm a test engineer. So then I was writing software to test the launch ground data bus for the space shuttle program. Incredible. Oh my gosh. I actually engineered my entire own test system just for that purpose. So it's so specialized. it's unbelievable. Wow. Yeah. so that's how I got into that. And then, and in the meantime, I was through that whole time, I was still surfing whenever I could, I'd get up five in the morning, go surfing before working and dunk a bottle of water on my head and go to work, with wet hair, I didn't care, I just, as long as I get out and start surfing and go to work. So I ended up working with, the launch system, and then I left and went to Orlando Sentinel for a year to help them do a big migration. And then from there, they hired me back at NASA to be the lead person for four NASA centers to do their IT stuff for all their windows management. Which was finally the contract that I was hired for the first time. Oh, really? Yeah. So it only took so many years, like 10 years to get. I was going to ask, so 10 years you were there at NASA? Doing shuttle work. Wow. Okay. Hired for PC work. Then they wanted me back to do windows management because they basically said, Rich was the only guy that ever made that stuff work. where the heck is he? So they had me co interview for this role, to be the lead guy for Ford Asset Centers, and they hired me. So then I did that for a year and that's a long story, but things didn't go so well with that company just in general. So I resigned and then in two days later, I was applying at Microsoft and then Microsoft hired me and relocated me from Satellite Beach all the way up to Charlotte, and then I was sitting there and I'm thinking like, this is going to be the best thing I ever did. And I'm like, what did I do to myself? Cause now I used to live two blocks from the beach and now I'm not. Now you're in Charlotte. In Charlotte, in the middle of Charlotte. Like five and a half hours from the beach. Yeah. Even to Charleston, it was like four and a half hours. Oh wow. Yeah. So it was quite an experience, but then I realized that, they have a big lake and it's not such a bad place to live, but there was definitely a changing point in my life where For the first time, I put my career totally ahead of like my endless summer. and how long were you in Charlotte? Over 20 years, 20 years. That's a long time. Yeah. 22 years at Microsoft.

And Now in Topsail

40:34

and what brought you here? So we kept taking trips here because as the kids got older, they loved, going out to the beach and going fishing and surfing and I taught them all how to surf and, and so we started really wanting to do more and more of that. And we started meeting people from here and around here, getting to know the area better. And it was like, this is really such a nice place. And the people are so laid back. It's it's a great community. We should just move here. So then it turned out that's what we did. We decided this is where we're going to come. And how long have you been here? Three and a half years. Any regrets? No. Good. So surfing, are you doing any surfing around here? Yeah, I do, but it's like when you've traveled to some of the top surfing destinations in the world and when you're in your, at your fittest and you really went and charged all that stuff. It's hard to really get jazzed about it here sometimes. it's just not that good most of the time, honestly, but it's still fun. I don't have the same fitness level, fishing looks, looks a lot more attractive to me most of the time. Cause I know Do you enjoy fishing? I love fishing. I didn't realize how good the fishing was here until I started going out there and doing it. so now that's what I do mostly is I'm just always watching the conditions and I'm always ready to gas the boat as soon as the ocean gets calm and run out there and fish. Nice. Yeah. Oh, so you're going out on the ocean fishing, Okay. I go out on the ocean more than I go in the inshore. Yeah. Okay.

Consultations and Pricing

42:02

So all of your services are based on each client's needs. And when you're talking about property or construction progress, or even the advertising media production that you're doing, everyone is so different. How do you do your pricing? Yeah, so for me, pricing, there's a lot of rules around that, around photography. Some people just put their prices up there. Some people don't. There's a lot of reasons why. And that's because there's a lot of competition. So for me, I'm the kind of person where if someone calls me I want to make sure we hit it off and we have a rapport, that kind of thing. And then, all of my pricing is like standardized sort of packages that I know people might want for real estate, things like that. But really like media advertising, it's going to be completely custom. I don't know exactly if they just want photo work or they want video that do they want drone? Can I even do drone? I had somebody call me up can you do the drone out on the base? I'm like, no. Yeah, totally restricted airspace. not happening, but I can do everything else probably, as long as it's allowed. You do some type of a consultation where you meet with them and figure out exactly what they need. Yes. So it starts out as initial, an initial consult about what you're trying to do. And then I realized, by talking to them, that's going to be two or three or four photo shoots. And of course that makes the price a little higher, more than one. Then depending on what the end product's going to be, How much of that they want, then that also will entail how much more time it's going to take me. I've, I have a good idea of how long it takes me to get editing done and things like that. Yeah. So I base it off of that. And then you provide an estimate and they go from there. Full blown quote with a shot list, everything that we talked about. Nice. so that way they know what we're going to cover and there's nothing left out. They have to pre approve all that and sign a contract. Then we're working. Okay. Good point. And

The Name, Outer Sky Imaging and Final Thoughts

43:46

the name, Outer Sky Imaging, how did you come up with that name? What does it mean to you? that's a fun one because back in the day, I was doing a lot of songwriting and doing recording songs. And I was trying to be extremely unique about everything. I love music and I didn't listen to the radio for two, three years. Cause I didn't want anybody else's music to bleed into what I was doing. So everyone talks about the inner child. And so I've, started seeing things like about the outer child. I was like, okay, so what's the, what is an outer child? So I, my, my band recording project was called Outer Child. Oh, so it's It's the other child that people ignore and don't nurture, right? That needs to be nurtured. So that's what it was for me. then I got into this whole outer thing. My boat is called Outer Sea. And then I thought about it and I'm like, why can't it be something imaging, and then it's got drone. So let's add in the sky and it could be outer sky. there's no limit. Yeah. I like it. Okay. So we are at the point where we're going to do final thoughts. We're going to wrap things up here. So the last question I have for you is, what is the one thing that you really want the listeners to know about you, Rich, Ceres, or outer sky imaging? I think for me, it's that I really want to look for business people, my customers, or other business people. And I want business people that are passionate about what they're trying to do, they have a vision and a dream, and they want to get that message out. And I also like to have a working relationship with people to where, we both like working together because I feel like that just makes it all come out properly. That just makes for perfect success on both sides. We're, the customer's going to get what they want, and I'm going to have a lot of fun doing it. I like to have fun. Yeah, I get that about you. There are people that I worked with that said, when I left Microsoft, they're like, you always made it fun. And I'm like, thank you. Yeah, of course. It's not really, it shouldn't be work. that's why I like podcasting because it doesn't feel like work to me. it's play. I get

Contact Information

45:49

it. Okay. So we're going to give out your contact information here. Let me know if I leave anything out. Your phone number is seven zero four. 621 1720. You work out of Sneeds Ferry, but what areas are you covering? I can cover from here to Tahiti, if anyone wants to hire me over there. Yeah, no kidding. It's more likely you're going to be anywhere from like Emerald Isle, Moorhead City, down to Carolina Beach. Gotcha. Okay. The website is www. outerskyimaging. com and the email address is rs, for rich surace, at outerskyimaging. com. So rs at outerskyimaging. com. You can find and follow Outer Sky Imaging on Facebook and Twitter and I'll have those links for you clickable for easy access in my show notes as usual. thank you listeners for joining us today, and thank you again, Rich, for joining me on Topsail Insider and telling us all about outer sky imaging. Thank you, Christa. This was great

Topsail Insider Closing

46:48

fun. Thank you. Hey, if you enjoyed today's episode of Topsoil Insider, please show your support by clicking the follow or subscribe button on your favorite podcast listening platform. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Please also go to topsoilinsider. com and join our mailing list by clicking on the Make Me a Topsoil Insider button. While you're there, you can click the send me a voicemail button and let me know exactly what you're thinking. Your message just might be on an episode of Topsail Insider. You can email me at Christa at topsailinsider. com or call or text me at 910 800 0111. Thank you for listening and supporting Topsail Insider and our local businesses and nonprofits. These are our neighbors and our friends and together we build a mighty and a beautiful community I'm super proud to be a part of. I'll see you around Topsail.