would you pay to look epic?

I'm going to go ahead and chime in my disapproval. While I admire your entrepreneurship (?), you're basically going to be making a profit an the expense of potentially ruining my and many others experience of getting away from it all. You remember that feeling right? The reason why a lot of us climb, hike, bike or fly fish in the first place?
One thing about technology, just because we can do it, doesn't mean we should. Although hell, if you're going through with this, this may be a good time to start my "Backcountry Sling Shot, Paintball and Pellet Gun Rentals." I'm sure we'll have a great working relationship.

mediocre wrote:I'm going to go ahead and chime in my disapproval. While I admire your entrepreneurship (?), you're basically going to be making a profit an the expense of potentially ruining my and many others experience of getting away from it all. You remember that feeling right? The reason why a lot of us climb, hike, bike or fly fish in the first place? One thing about technology, just because we can do it, doesn't mean we should. Although hell, if you're going through with this, this may be a good time to start my "Backcountry Sling Shot, Paintball and Pellet Gun Rentals." I'm sure we'll have a great working relationship.

Heck yea lets do a rock climbing paintball war on a good 5.1-5.5 multi pitch cliff. It would be epic!

Jon Sullivan wrote:Im following through with a business idea. Im hoping for a lot of options. you can simply say "yes" or "no" to my question. discussions are welcome though, Im interested in people's thoughts. It's Saturday, blue bird day and you and your comrades are racking up/skinnig for the day's objective ( snow, rock, ice, big mountain, whatever ). Its been a long time since you and these friends have all gotten together for a great day out using your skill sets where they belong (outside!) and you have the oh so wonderful feeling that today, you will crush. Those moments of working through the crux or making the last jump turn before you bomb down that oh so sweet chute or you're running it out to the anchor makes your soul beam with joy. The heroin of being an athlete in the mountains is a feeling that is unparalleled and sometimes we all just want our goddamn parents and grandparents, our couch potato friends, our partners who wonder what the hell we're doing out there to know what it is we are in fact doing! Would you, the weekend warrior, whether you project 5.10 or warm up on 5.12, whether you prefer the trees or the steep chutes, pay someone to capture your day via drone? Full video editing with music or just raw footage? what would you think is a reasonable rate for both raw and edited footage of a full day out capturing everything from the send to the beers after the day's achievements ? This came to me sometime a year or so ago when I finished a long time project and wished that this time, someone was at the anchor recording it. Its not everyday. for the most part, I like the peace of being out in the hills. every now and then though, the day is buzzing with epicness and I want to relive those moments, sometimes even later that night just so I can say " Damn, that is what I live for ". Speak your thoughts, Im very curious. Thanks ! Jon S

Test the market....take the Drone to Indian Creek and buzz those walls to solicit business. I'd love an update on your results.

Bill Kirby wrote: I like the fact that no one wants this service because no climber needs or takes fancy photos. BULLSHIT! Maybe Jon could shoot your profile picture. You know the one you got there with the most badass location you've been to. The one you be so proud of.. How great would it be to have a professional style profile pic?

Contemplate the possibility that some folks simply don't give a rat's ass about such things.

The mistake is interpreting the responses as "no climber needs or takes fancy photos". Probably, some climbers do need or take fancy photos. Some climbers don't, and they have replied as such.

deathzonescience wrote: Test the market....take the Drone to Indian Creek and buzz those walls to solicit business. I'd love an update on your results.

Targets!

Im sure it has been said already but please stay in Colorado!

Bill Kirby wrote: I like the fact that no one wants this service because no climber needs or takes fancy photos. BULLSHIT! Maybe Jon could shoot your profile picture. You know the one you got there with the most badass location you've been to. The one you be so proud of.. How great would it be to have a professional style profile pic?

Climbers already have the option of hiring a professional photographer to take shots of them climbing and, looking around, it appears that no one is doing so. I doubt they are going to pay for for a drone.

Jon, add me to the list of people who would rather not have these things buzzing around in wilderness areas. That said, you might have better luck with other groups. You could check out skiing or surfing forums and see what they say.

If somebody posted about selfie sticks on a forum I'm sure you'll get more haters than supporters. However look how they are selling.

Jon your idea has great merit. Drones are already being used for this purpose.

Yeah! Drones!

A sort of serious question. If I am on a climb next to your climber as you film and I end up in your video that ends up being sold for a big profit - do you have to have my permission to use that footage? Am I entitled to a share - the possibility exists that the neighboring climber actually becomes the valuable part of the video?

Most likely, if you're climbing, you're in a public area and have no "reasonable expectation to privacy." It obviously depends, but generally speaking, a bystander or neighboring climber on the video would have no claim to their likeness being used/captured on video.

mediocre wrote:I'm going to go ahead and chime in my disapproval. While I admire your entrepreneurship (?), you're basically going to be making a profit an the expense of potentially ruining my and many others experience of getting away from it all. You remember that feeling right? The reason why a lot of us climb, hike, bike or fly fish in the first place? One thing about technology, just because we can do it, doesn't mean we should. Although hell, if you're going through with this, this may be a good time to start my "Backcountry Sling Shot, Paintball and Pellet Gun Rentals." I'm sure we'll have a great working relationship.

Couldn't agree more. Just make sure the shooting gear is lightweight. Maybe a carbon fiber shotgun or rocket launcher. The best would be a lightweight rocket launcher with a go pro so I'd have a video to remember the time I shot down a drone on pitch 4.

If I were you, I wouldn't be looking for advice on the MP forum. As you can see, most of the people here are going to hate this idea for ethical reasons or cost concerns. But I wouldn't be discouraged: the people on this site generally and these forums in particular are not you're potential clients anyway.

I think established guiding services are your potential clients. If I were you, I would come up with a careful plan of how you are going to keep the batteries charged and how much you would charge for editing and creating these videos. Then I would go to commercial guiding services and say, "You have these people who are already willing to spend money to have adventures. They would love to have a high quality record of these days. I can help you create that for them."

You don't want to have to go through the trouble of finding people who want to pay money for outdoor adventures. Let the guiding services do that for you and work as a contractor for them.

I'm guessing the market for this sort of thing would be primarily people who climb with a guide on a vacation trip and not the majority of the climbing community.

Other than having a souvenir of their "epic" climb, I don't know what most people would do with the video (bore their friends and family?) but YouTube and other sites are already overflowing with bad, boring home videos of people climbing (especially POV GoPro vids) that I doubt many people really care to watch.

I have no doubt some people would pay for this service but I also agree that having drones buzzing around the crags would be an annoyance to the climbing community and would likely lead to some ugliness.

Just my opinion...

BJB wrote:If I were you, I wouldn't be looking for advice on the MP forum. As you can see, most of the people here are going to hate this idea for ethical reasons or cost concerns. But I wouldn't be discouraged: the people on this site generally and these forums in particular are not you're potential clients anyway.

Spot on regarding the business plan and potential clients. But, if other climbers are going to be impacted by this "service" then the OP did the right thing by posting in MP. In fact, he should venture over to supertopo and do the same.

Tapawingo wrote: Spot on regarding the business plan and potential clients. But, if other climbers are going to be impacted by this "service" then the OP did the right thing by posting in MP. In fact, he should venture over to supertopo and do the same.

Yes, Take it there.- the responses will be fun to read.

I guess the OP has never been to the Owens River Gorge....

The sign, at the top of the Main approach reads:

"Stay on the Trail"
"No Trundling"
"No Posing"

Words that entire generations of climbers live by.