Hayden couple takes flight
In January, husband and wife Don and Adina Taylor opened their own aerial production company. The Taylors will make their profits over the weekend selling footage of the Priest Lake snowmobile event to racers, racers’ friends and families, and other locals. LOREN BENOIT/Press
Don and Adina Taylor have invested more than $100,000 into their own aerial production company. A lot of their investments have focused on cameras designed for professional filming, including their 6K camera with Apple ProRes and Cinema DNG licensing. The couple will film the Priest Lake snowmobile races this weekend. (LOREN BENOIT/Press)
Don Taylor attaches a camera to his DJI Martice 210 drone before a flight demonstration at Higgens Point. (LOREN BENOIT/Press)
LOREN BENOIT/Press Don Taylor and his wife Adina recently opened their own aerial production company. Here, Don flies his DJI Inspire 2 at Higgens Point before they film the Priest Lake snowmobile races this weekend.
Don Taylor (left) keeps track of his drone while filming the Priest Lake Vintage Snowmobile races in January, while his wife Adina pilots hers from their basecamp. The husband-and-wife team out of Hayden launched their newest business — a film production company called DNA Drone Applications — in January. (Courtesy of Adina Taylor)
COEUR d’ALENE — The two black-and-gray birds waited carefully above the parking lot at Higgens Point late Thursday morning, their sharp talons ready to touch ground if they needed to land, their eyes swiveling around, mindful of nearby fellow fliers. They hovered gently up and down in the sky before quickly gaining altitude and darting off toward the horizon.
These weren’t the bald eagles so often spotted along the east end of the lake, though their price tags and capabilities make them just as rare. No, these were two agile, cutting-edge, professionally-manned drones.
“It looks like it’s from the movies,” Don Taylor admitted in the parking lot at the end of East Coeur d’Alene Lake Drive as he assembled a DJI Inspire 2, one of seven drones in his commercial fleet. “It looks like it’s from Alien.”
While the fleet’s price tag might not quite match that of a big-budget sci-fi movie, Don and his wife, Adina, have invested as much as the cost of an indie flick to get their new film production company — DNA Drone Applications — off the ground.
“These drones fly so smooth,” Adina said as she steered the Inspire 2 along the shoreline a quarter-mile from the parking lot. “Butter-smooth.”
Their investment — eclipsing more than $100,000 since opening for business in January — is already paying off. The Hayden couple gave The Press a demonstration before heading north for the weekend, where they will set up shop for the Priest Lake Vintage Snowmobile Racing finals.
During the two-day event, the Taylors will — with the partnership of a family friend and his 25-foot television — broadcast live drone footage of the race at the basecamp, just as they did for the race’s initial weekend in January. Adina said she saw it as an opportunity to both introduce DNA to North Idaho and experiment in the marketplace of live events.
DNA will make its profits over the weekend selling footage of the snowmobile race. It’s not the primary focus of the production company’s mission — DNA is driving toward the always-expanding video commercial market.
“That’s a $13,000 infrared camera,” Don said as he pointed to the attachment hanging from the frame of the second drone, a Matrice V210. “We can use this for search-and-rescue. Fire departments can use this to map out hot spots during a forest fire. We can use these cameras to get to more hard-to-reach areas.”
He said drones give companies a lot more flexibility to inspect construction sites or cell towers without having to send someone up a ladder.
It’s that latter prospect which sparked Adina’s attention.
“The zooming capabilities on these things are unreal,” she said of another attachment, a Z30 inspection camera attached to the Matrice. “We can fly out to a cell tower, and from about 150 feet away, we can read the serial number off of a bolt.”
While Adina said those possibilities are on the horizon and always on her mind, Don added their investments have focused on cameras designed for professional filming, including their 6K camera with Apple ProRes and Cinema DNG licensing. DNA’s flightplan is centered on film production.
“These are not toys,” Don stressed. “That is a big misconception. These are not toys. These are utilized for many different purposes. People don’t just go buy these things.”
Adina said they are looking at aerial filming mud bogs, dirt bike races and weddings this summer.
“The next thing we’ve got coming up is a commercial we hope to be shooting for LiteFeet.”
LiteFeet Entertainment out of Spokane teaches a range of dance styles from swing to salsa and offers dance entertainment for events and charities. LiteFeet’s owner and founder, Dusty Wetzler, said he was looking forward to watching DNA unwrap its potential.
“I’m really excited about them,” Wetzler said. “I know they both have an extensive business history.”
Adina and Don — owners of Peachy Kleen Cleaning Services and Don Taylor Tree Service, respectively — both said that they would continue to expand their current businesses, but that this new business was one they were most excited to expand.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” Don said, adding that he grew up with remote-controlled helicopters. “Due to the fact that technology has finally gotten so good and opened up so many avenues just in the last few months, that’s when I decided it was time to invest and do the business.”
It’s an investment that has tested Don and Adina’s skills while also forcing them to earn their UAS 107 pilot’s licenses from the Federal Aviation Administration.
“We have to know airspace,” Don said. “We have to know it just like any other pilot. We have to be able to read runways. We have to know what the airport beacons do. We have to know everything that a real pilot knows except for their airframe tests, and we don’t have to have pilot hours behind the stick of an actual aircraft.”
As Adina landed her drone gently on the Higgens Point concrete, she said the experience of flying a drone is already worth the investment.
“With everything we can do with this business, the sky’s the limit,” she said.