Adam Worden and his wife, Leslie, say they like to reach for the sky. Then they shoot a photo of what they see, all via remote control.

With their Spokane business, Northwest Elevated Photography LLC, they say they aim to put a different angle on aerial photography—or elevated photography, really—making it accessible for a wide variety of purposes in which the cost previously was prohibitive.

While most aerial photographers use a helicopter or airplane to get above a location or an event to shoot photos, Northwest Elevated Photography uses a trailer-mounted telescoping arm to raise a camera up to 60 feet in the air, Adam Worden says. He says that allows him to offer photos to clients at a much lower cost than shots taken in flight, generally $100 to $300 for a standard real estate photo shoot, since he doesn't have the huge expense of employing an aircraft in a shoot.

The Wordens say that so far, the business has done far better than they had hoped.

"We thought this would be a hobby at first," Worden says. "Our first couple of years we wanted to build a client base."

He says he's found that the business has broader appeal than he imagined. He's been called upon to take pictures of a parking lot at different times of day so a commercial real estate owner could demonstrate to a potential client that there would be ample parking for his business. He says he got a lot of attention and interest while wheeling his equipment around on a dolly at Hoopfest last spring.

Worden says that he's had good response to his photography in the real estate market, predominantly to showcase higher-end homes, and recently obtained his real estate license to learn more about that sector and to make some extra income to support the young company. Though the business operates full time, Adam Worden currently also is working at another job, while Leslie runs the day-to-day operations of Northwest Elevated Photography.

The photography setup consists of the telescoping-arm equipped trailer that can be driven to a site. There, the arm is extended to raise a digital camera that's mounted on a remote-controlled pivoting box. The trailer and equipment, which is powered by a marine battery, are 18 feet long, Worden says.

Once the trailer is positioned, the camera operator uses the remote control to rotate the digital still or video camera as desired and can view the image captured by the camera on a screen at ground level, then shoot elevated shots of just about anything, including homes, weddings, and special events. Though it's predominantly used for outdoor shots, Worden says he can bring the equipment into gymnasiums and other large, indoor venues as well. He says that although he predominantly shoots still photography, he is expanding into videography using the same equipment.

Worden, who served in the U.S. Air Force for 11 years, says he has always been a camera buff, and has worked in various capacities at different photography studios over the past 20 years. He and his wife also both come from entrepreneurial families, he says, so they had been looking for a possible business to start when he came across a Web site for a product developed by Sky Mast Engineering LLC, of Milford, Mich. That company designed the arm to reduce the expense of taking elevated shots for its customers, and now sells the equipment, and franchise-type rights to territories.

"Our ultimate goal as a family has been to own our own company," Worden says. Both of the Wordens are trained to take the photos and edit them using computer software, and they say they hope that in a few years, their children, two of whom will be teenagers by then, also will participate in the family business.

Worden says he purchased rights to use the equipment in the Spokane area.

The Wordens invested about $20,000 to buy the equipment and to get their business off the ground in October of 2008, but treated it primarily as a hobby until Worden was laid off in January of last year. At that time, Worden says he decided to work on building the business, and he began offering his services to real estate companies, construction companies, and advertising agencies, as well as organizers of events such as Hoopfest.

To drum up business at first, he took his equipment out to homes that had for sale signs, took photos of the homes, and offered to sell the owners the photos.

Worden says customer response has been tremendous, and he primarily markets the company by offering free photography workshops to real estate organizations and showing his portfolio to the participants.

"When we started, I marketed for the first two weeks, then I didn't have to market for the next six months," he says. Last year, Worden estimates he did about 100 photo shoots, and he hopes to reach a point where he's doing about 40 shoots each month. In addition, as he becomes more known, he's being hired more often to photograph the interiors of homes. He says that over the past month, the company has added more than 75 new clients.

So far, the Wordens have reinvested most of their income from the company into purchasing additional camera equipment and computers.

The company markets itself through its Web site, at www.nwephoto.com, and Worden says he's also in negotiations to subcontract with other local photographers who might want to offer their clients an added dimension to their photo packages.

Although he and his wife anticipated a break in business between December and March, calls have continued to come in for photos because of the mild weather, giving the company a boost, Worden says. The venture is busy enough now that the Wordens are considering moving it out of their home and into a studio, which would allow Worden to do studio portraits as well, he says. If they do that, they also will add an employee, they say.