Acme Drone Images in Farragut: Seaton giving a new view
“Instead of being on the ground, you can actually see the progress of the development from the air,” said Seaton, who operates his business from home. “This gives a different perspective … on the activity someone has an interest in.”
He added a drone image “gives a potential buyer or a person evaluating a different perspective on what they are seeing.
“You can’t see everything from the ground level. When you put an aircraft into the air, you see it from a top-down, 360-degree perspective. So, you give a potential buyer greater visualization of what it is they are looking at.”
Anyone interested in drone images can visit his website, acmedroneimages.com, or call 615-496-6783.
Seaton moved to Farragut the end of May 2021 then established Acme Drone Images in December 2021. However, the business actually started five years ago, before he retired from the healthcare information technology sales director field.
He got the passion for drones eight years prior, when he saw someone fly a drone in a hobby shop.
“I said ‘that looks pretty easy;’ so I bought the drone, took it home and found out how difficult it was to master,” Seaton said. “Finally, after having eight or nine drones – crashing them, losing them and all that – I became pretty proficient at being able to fly the aircraft itself.
“Photography is another component, where the photographic elements of setting the scene, the picture, getting the shot is not just about flying,” he added.
Prior to the healthcare field, Seaton was a U.S. Army officer for 14 years. He graduated from West Point Military Academy in 1978 and served in the military from 1978 to 1992.
While in the Army, he served in conflicts in Saudi Arabia and Grenada in 1983 while in the 82nd Airborne Division.
As Seaton approached retirement from healthcare, he recalled, “You try to figure out what passions do you have and what passions can you turn into a vocation.”
He realized he enjoyed working with drones and could turn it into a business, which Seaton started in Franklin (Williamson County) in 2017. He worked on a variety of projects in the Nashville area that included the Mack Hatcher Bypass, a $21 million project. He also worked on two civil engineering projects for the City of Brentwood and a couple of projects for a company supporting high-end real estate sales.
“In this particular (real estate) business, they would ask for images of multi-million-dollar properties that would be taken from the air and then presented into a portfolio so that buyers would be able to understand what they are getting,” Seaton said.
Although a drone business was different from the healthcare field, he said, “We all have hobbies throughout our life ... this is one that I thought, ‘why not turn it into a business and help bring value to some customers who need this type of service?’”
