"Let's go over there, to the faraway field," Brent Hall advised. "If we fly it over here, all of the kids will come running."

A few minutes later, his reasoning becomes clear.

The homemade helicopter looks like a cross between a spider and a UFO. He built the roughly $4,000 aircraft himself, cobbling together the design from online forums. He ordered parts from as far away as Hong Kong and attached a high-end compact digital camera underneath it.

Hall placed the helicopter on the ground, installed the battery and powered up the helicopter. One at a time, propellers fluttered to life like insect wings until all eight whirred in unison.

Hall piloted the craft off the ground and made it hover a few feet off of the ground. It bounced slightly in the 25- to 30-mile-per-hour crosswinds. Then he flicked a few switches and the helicopter floated away.

Hall is the owner of Accent Aerial Photography, a three-year-old company born of Hall's love of helicopters and photography.

"I love photography, but I didn't want to do weddings or portraits," he said. "There is hardly any competition [for this type of photography]. I want to do unique stuff no one has ever seen before."

Hall's helicopter can go where most photographers cannot.

Getting a normal aerial photograph—say, a shot of the downtown Austin skyline—would require a renting and fueling a manned helicopter. A pilot would have to fly a photographer more than 500 feet in the air. It can get very expensive, he said.

Hall's services start at $350. His roughly 6-pound helicopter can hover from ground level up to 400 feet. Hall sees what the helicopter sees through a monitor above his remote control. Replicating a complicated video he shot of The Reserve at Lake Travis's pool would take a crane and track system, he said.

"The applications are changing constantly," he said. "I do a lot of high-end real estate photos. I did a construction shot for Water Treatment Plant 4. They were loading a pipe off of a barge at Mansfield Dam."

For one real estate job, Hall flew his helicopter around a house on a cliff. The homeowner had never seen his house from the cliff side before.

It takes a lot of practice to fly Hall's helicopter. Hall's control dials move the helicopter up, down, left and right. If the helicopter is facing Hall, he must press the right control to make it go left and vice versa.

He said he has logged hundreds of hours crashing helicopters on his computer simulator before putting his creation in the air.

"I love the uniqueness of it," he said.

Uses for aerial photos

• Construction
• Real estate
• Special events
• Website content
• Skyline shots
• Panoramas
• Video

Accent Aerial Photography, 827-8777, www.accentap.com