What It Means to Be a Drone Pro
Drones got a lot cheaper and a lot easier to fly over the last several years, and that changed the market fast. A decent camera drone now costs less than a used lawnmower, and anyone with a hundred YouTube tutorials under their belt can get one in the air. That's good for the hobby. It's made the professional side of the business a lot harder to sort out for the person hiring. Because here's the thing. Owning a drone does not make someone a drone pro any more than owning a camera makes someone a photographer. There's a real gap between a guy who flies on weekends for gas money and a business that treats aerial photography and video as a craft. If you're a builder, a real estate agent, a marketing director, or anyone else hiring someone to fly a drone for your project, understanding that gap will save you money, headaches, and possibly a legal mess.
The Cheap Route and Why It's Tempting
You've probably seen the ads. Someone on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist offering aerial photos for fifty bucks. A neighbor's kid with a Mini drone who'll shoot your listing for a six pack. It's tempting, especially on a tight budget, and sometimes the footage even looks fine on a phone screen. The problem shows up later. Maybe the footage was shot illegally in restricted airspace and nobody found out until a complaint got filed. Maybe the photographer had no insurance, and a drone came down on a customer's car in the parking lot. Maybe the files handed over were low resolution screen grabs instead of the raw footage you needed for a real ad campaign. Cheap work usually stays cheap looking, and when something goes wrong, there's rarely anyone to call. A hobbyist flying for a little side cash isn't necessarily a bad person, and plenty of them are learning the craft the right way. But hobby flying and running a legitimate drone business are two different things, and the differences matter most when there's real money, a real brand, or real liability on the line.
Securing a Part 107 License
The first and most basic marker of a drone pro is a Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate from the FAA. This isn't optional paperwork. Anyone flying a drone for compensation in the United States is legally required to hold one. It means passing a knowledge test covering airspace classification, weather, regulations, and operating rules, and it means staying current on recurrent training every couple of years.
Keith Stancil, founder of Nashville Drone Co, holds his Part 107 certification, and it shapes how every job gets planned before a drone ever leaves the case. A pilot without the license isn't legally allowed to accept payment for the work in the first place, which tells you a lot about anyone offering to shoot a paid job without one.
Abiding by FAA Rules for Every Flight
A license is the starting point, not the whole picture. A real drone pro understands airspace restrictions around airports, works within altitude limits, checks NOTAMs before a flight, and knows when a job requires special authorization to fly near controlled airspace or over people.
Downtown construction sites are a good example. Flying near a high rise under construction in an active city core means understanding altitude above ground level, coordinating with the site, and sometimes filing documentation with the FAA before takeoff. Nashville Drone Co has built entire workflows around this kind of compliance work, including detailed flight planning for jobs near Nashville's busiest construction corridors. That planning happens quietly, before the client ever sees a single frame of footage, and it's the difference between a shoot that goes smoothly and one that ends with a grounded drone or a fine.
Carrying Real Drone Insurance
Ask a hobbyist if they carry liability insurance and you'll often get a shrug. Ask a drone pro the same question and you'll get a policy number. Commercial drone insurance covers property damage and liability if something goes wrong mid flight, and for any job involving people, vehicles, buildings, or crowds, it's not something a serious operator skips.
This matters even more on active job sites. A construction company letting a drone operator fly above workers and equipment wants to know there's coverage if a mechanical failure sends a drone into a windshield or a scaffold. A legitimate business carries that coverage as a basic cost of doing the work, not as an afterthought.
A Website That Actually Shows the Work
A drone pro has a real website, not just a phone number scrawled at the bottom of a Facebook post. That site should include a gallery of still photography and a reel of video work, because a portfolio is the only honest way to judge someone's eye before hiring them.
Nashvilledrone.co is built around exactly that idea. The site shows finished photography and video work across construction progress documentation, real estate, film and music video projects, and commercial marketing campaigns, so a potential client can see the actual quality of the work before ever picking up the phone. That kind of transparency is rare among part time operators, and it's one of the fastest ways to tell who's serious.
Knowing How to Edit, Not Just Fly
Flying a drone well is one skill. Turning raw footage into something usable is a completely different one. A drone pro edits video, cuts sequences together with pacing that holds attention, and understands how to build a piece that actually serves the client's purpose instead of just stringing clips together in the order they were shot. The same goes for photos. Raw drone images straight off the sensor rarely look their best without work. Exposure blending with bracketing, sky replacement when needed, cropping for composition, and general retouching are part of the job, not an extra service tacked on. A pro treats editing as half the craft, right alongside flying.
Color Grading and Photo Editing
Beyond basic editing, a real drone pro understands color grading, which is different from a simple filter or a one click preset. Grading shapes mood, matches footage shot at different times of day, and gives a final video a cohesive, cinematic look instead of a flat, straight out of camera feel. Keith Stancil's background gives him an unusual head start here. Before founding Nashville Drone Co, he spent over two decades in professional entertainment marketing, and that experience with visual storytelling and post production carries directly into how footage gets treated after the flight. A drone that shoots gorgeous 6K footage still needs a skilled hand afterward to make it sing, and that's the part clients often don't see until they compare a graded final product against raw footage from a weekend flyer.
Real Client Feedback, Not Just Claims
A drone pro backs up their work with actual client testimonials and Google reviews rather than just saying they're good. Reviews from real customers, tied to real projects, give a potential client something to check before they commit. Anyone can claim great work. Fewer businesses have a trail of satisfied clients willing to put their name behind it.
An Eye for Composition
Technical skill only goes so far without a sense of composition. Knowing where to position a drone relative to a building, how to frame a subject against a skyline, when to fly straight down for a top view versus angling in for depth, all of that is an eye that develops over years of shooting, not something that shows up in a spec sheet. It's the difference between a photo that's technically in focus and one that actually stops someone scrolling.
Understanding Marketing and Sales
The best drone pros think past the shot itself. They understand that a construction progress photo isn't just a pretty picture, it's a marketing asset a developer will use to attract tenants or investors. A real estate video isn't just footage, it's a tool meant to help a property sell faster. Nashville Drone Co approaches every project this way, whether it's documenting a downtown high rise for a developer's marketing team or capturing a commercial property for a listing. The work exists to help someone sell, promote, or tell a story, and a drone pro keeps that goal in mind from the first flight plan to the final edit.
The Bottom Line
Anyone can buy a drone. Very few build an actual business around one. The gap between the two comes down to licensing, compliance, insurance, a real portfolio, editing skill, color work, client trust, a trained eye, and an understanding of what the footage is actually for. Nashville Drone Co and Keith Stancil have built a track record around all of it, with years of work across film, music video, construction, and commercial marketing projects throughout Middle Tennessee. When the job matters, that track record is worth more than a bargain rate from someone still learning to fly.
Contact Nashville Drone Co to hire a real drone pro for your next project. info@nashvilledrone.com