Sky High

Colette Eddy must pay close watch to the weather before she heads to work. Grey clouds can throw a day's work off kilter.

Instead of sitting down in front of a computer screen, as CEO and owner of Tampa-based photography firm Aerial Innovations, Eddy flies 1,500 feet in the air in one of her rented aircrafts snapping shots of rumbling herds of buffalo, towering skyscrapers and most notably, construction projects.

Her passion for flight and photography pushed her firm from a happenstance startup in 1987 to a $1 million company this year. She's up 50% for 2011, to $1 million. She hopes to keep the momentum going into 2012.

That is, if the regulatory, tax and health care uncertainty don't shoot her down.

Eddy's job is not for one afraid of heights. In fact, her newest addition, Jason Stephens, had to get over some stomach troubles. They gave him the distinguished “air award” for most times getting sick during a shoot.

A queasy stomach is what Eddy felt after she was fired from a sales position with a similar photography firm in Fort Lauderdale in the '80s. “I was canned,” Eddy says with a surprising smile.

Following the disappointment she took a job at Progressive Insurance out of necessity. “I lasted a whole three days,” she laughs.

That's when one of her former clients, Roy Dickie, then a project manager at Trammell Crowe construction, pushed her into the entrepreneurial arena. “Roy said that if I started my own business he would give us all his business,” she says. Trammell Crowe, which has completed $50 billion worth of construction, clearly had the firepower.

The promise of a stable stream of revenue and a $25,000 loan from a physician friend of Eddy's propelled her to start Aerial Innovations.

The firm has moved cyclically with the real estate sector and was rocked by the recent crisis. “Construction photography makes up about 80% of our business,” Eddy says. “So you can imagine what the recession did to us.”

Some additional challenges Eddy faces are familiar to entrepreneurs: taxes and regulation. “You know it's the small businesses that really get hurt by tax increases,” she says. “We don't have the legal firepower that the bigger corporations do,” she says.

Eddy mentions she's worried about letting people go because of changes in employee health care laws.

And regulations by the Federal Aviation Authority have made her job difficult. While shooting over Disney the FAA forces her to fly at double the height she would prefer.

To get around these changes she has started lobbying for more relaxed laws. “I've started talking to lawyers and getting in touch with the right people,” Eddy says.

Aerial Innovations has a current staff of six, down from the 12 it had two years ago, and is operating at annual revenues of around $1 million. Eddy projects a 10% increase in revenues over the next 12 months “if business stays the way it is,” she says.

Eddy is most excited about a project near Miami in which she will soar above the world's largest ribbon-cutting ceremony, which entails shooting the five-mile-long ribbon from the sky.

Life in the sky isn't always carefree. Eddy has been forced down on occasion in humorous circumstances.

One time her photographer was shooting above a prison and the flight was grounded. Prison officials thought the plane was part of an elaborate escape plan set up by one of the inmates.

Despite leering real estate troubles and government uncertainty, Eddy says she wouldn't have it any other way. “It's an amazing position to be in,” Eddy says, “flying above those skyscrapers and seeing the people inside at their desks. It makes me thankful to just be making it by.”