For outdoor marketing
Signage, billboards, and facades — shot like the media buy they are.
Drone photos and drone video, HDR photography from the air and the ground, ground and aerial video, sign installations, and finished facade work. One crew, one visit, and a full library of proof and marketing imagery for every location.
Trusted by leading regional and global brands
Why it matters
Outdoor spend is invisible without proof.
The sign is built, the wall is wrapped, the board is posted — and the only record is a crooked phone photo from the parking lot. We give you the imagery that closes out the job and sells the next one.
Prove the install went up right
Signage, billboards, and facade work get paid on proof. Clean aerial and ground documentation of the finished install gives your client, your landlord, and your own records a single set of images everyone accepts.
Make the building the ad
The facade, the monument sign, the pylon, the wrapped wall — that's your most expensive piece of media. We photograph it the way a brand campaign would, not the way a phone would.
Turn one install into a year of content
One capture day feeds proof-of-performance packages, sales decks, the website portfolio, and the social posts that win the next sign contract.
What we do
Everything above ground level — and everything at eye level.
Drone photos & drone video
FAA Part 107 aerial coverage of signage, billboards, rooftops, and facades from the exact angle the sign was designed to be seen from. Aerial photos and drone photos are the same thing — you get both stills and 4K clips from the same flight.
- Eye-level to 400 ft coverage
- Sign, pylon & billboard face detail
- 4K cinematic aerial video clips
HDR photography — aerial & ground
Bracketed HDR captures hold detail in bright sign faces and shaded building surfaces at the same time. Lit signage at dusk, glass facades at midday, illuminated billboards at night — all correctly exposed and architecturally corrected.
- HDR bracketing, aerial and ground
- Day, dusk & night illuminated sets
- Print- and web-ready delivery
Ground video & aerial video
Motion coverage of the finished environment: gimbal moves past the facade, reveals of the sign face, traffic and pedestrian context that shows the impressions the placement actually earns.
- Gimbal ground video
- Aerial reveals & orbits
- Vertical cuts for social
Billboard & signage photography
Billboards, monument signs, pylons, channel letters, blade signs, wayfinding, and wall wraps — photographed straight-on for proof of posting and in context for marketing.
- Straight-on proof-of-posting frames
- In-context traffic & approach shots
- Full inventory sets across markets
Sign installation coverage
We shoot the install as it happens — crane sets, crew at height, the moment the face goes on — then return for the finished, lit result. The before, the work, and the after in one package.
- Install-day aerial & ground coverage
- Crew and craft detail shots
- Return visit for the finished install
Facade & completed-build photography
Building hero imagery for campuses, retail centers, and corporate headquarters — elevations, entries, branded facades, and site context that becomes the anchor image for everything else you publish.
- Building hero & elevation sets
- Branded facade & entry detail
- Site context from altitude
What we cover
From a single monument sign to a national inventory of locations.
Facade capability · case study
Hallowell — new facility, new signage, day and evening facade sets.
Hallowell had just completed a new distribution and office facility with fresh illuminated channel-letter signage. They wanted the building documented twice in one day — bright midday coverage that shows the architecture and site, and an evening set where the sign face and interior glow carry the frame. We flew both windows and delivered a matched library from a single visit.
Daytime facade & signage
Evening & dusk — illuminated signage
Shot AEB, delivered as blended HDR
Every frame is captured with auto exposure bracketing (AEB) — multiple exposures of the same composition — then hand-blended into a single HDR image. That's how a bright sky, a white facade, and a lit sign face all hold correct exposure and detail in the same photograph instead of blowing out or going black.
- AEB capture, aerial and ground
- Hand-blended HDR, not a filter
- Matched day and evening sets
- Full-resolution print & web files
Where facility imagery like this gets used
One facade shoot becomes the image your company uses everywhere it needs to look established — inside the building and out.
- Board, investor & stakeholder presentations
- Executive decks and annual updates
- Website hero and facility pages
- Sales and capabilities material
- PR, press releases & LinkedIn announcements
- Lobby TVs, digital signage & desktop backgrounds
Drone video of the facade, same visit
Alongside the stills we fly cinematic 4K moves on the building — a slow reveal along the elevation, an orbit that holds the sign in frame, a pull-back that puts the facility in its site and highway context, plus vertical cuts for LinkedIn and in-office screens. Day and evening, same as the photography.
Site completion photography · case study
IONNA — a brand-new EV charging site, built to pull customers off the road.
IONNA had just opened a new electric-vehicle charging station and needed the finished site documented the way a customer actually encounters it — from the street, from the air, and standing under the canopy. We shot drone and ground in the same visit, midday for clean daylight coverage and again at sunset when the canopy, signage and charger bays light up. The result is a consumer-facing image library built to earn clicks and visits, not just to sit in a project archive.
Daylight — site, signage & canopy
Sunset & dusk — illuminated canopy and chargers
Built for the places customers actually look
For retail, service and roadside locations, the photo on your map listing is the storefront. High-end imagery makes a new site look open, safe and worth pulling into — and it outperforms phone snaps everywhere it appears.
- Google Business Profile & Google Maps listings
- Website homepage, location and store-finder pages
- Mobile app site cards and in-app imagery
- Apple Maps, Yelp and third-party directories
- Paid social, search and local ad creative
- Grand-opening PR, press kits and LinkedIn
Drone and ground, one visit
Aerials establish the site in its corridor and show approach, access and parking. Ground frames sell the experience — canopy lighting, equipment, wayfinding and the adjacent brands customers recognize. Top-downs cover bay layout and striping.
- Aerial context, approach & corridor visibility
- Ground hero frames of canopy, signage & equipment
- Top-down layout and bay documentation
- Matched daylight and sunset sets
- Cropped versions for maps, web and app tiles
Ground photography · 35mm film · case study
IONNA — shot on 35mm film to match the brand's look and feel.
We are not only in the air. For IONNA's new EV charging station documentation we worked the site on the ground and shot the whole set on 35mm film — Kodak Ektar, real grain, warm saturated color that lines up with IONNA's retro service-station branding. Digital would have been accurate; film was on-brand. These frames go on their website, on their Google Maps and Google Business listing, and into the app and directory placements that pull new drivers into the location.
We match the look, not just the subject
Every brand has a visual language already written down somewhere. If a certain look needs to be produced, we choose the camera, the lens and the medium to hit it — film or digital, wide or long, clean or grainy — so the new photography drops straight into the existing brand system without a fight.
- 35mm film stocks (Ektar, Portra) for warm, saturated, retro-leaning brands
- Digital medium-format and full-frame when clean, literal accuracy is the goal
- Camera, lens and stock chosen to match the client's existing brand imagery
- Ground-level frames that mirror how a customer arrives and walks the site
- Scanned, color-managed and delivered web-ready alongside the drone sets
Ground coverage that earns the visit
Ground photography is what a customer sees before they ever arrive — the sign from the street, the canopy, the chargers, the seating, the restrooms, the wayfinding. It is the imagery that carries a website, a map listing and an app card, and it is the fastest way to make a brand-new location feel open and worth stopping for.
- Website hero, location and store-finder pages
- Google Business Profile & Google Maps imagery
- Mobile app site cards and in-app photography
- Signage, amenity and wayfinding detail frames
- Brand and social content from the same visit
Billboards & out-of-home · proof of posting
Completed billboard photography and video — one board or the whole country.
When a campaign posts, someone has to prove it went up and make it look like a win. We fly the board the week it goes live and deliver both halves of the story: tight, straight-on frames where the creative reads perfectly, and wide context frames showing the highway, the interchange and the traffic the buy was paid for. We shoot video clips of the same board, so the client gets a recap edit alongside the stills. Run it on one board, across a city, or across every market in a national flight.
Context frames — the corridor, the interchange, the traffic
Where the billboard set gets used
- Proof-of-posting sets for the client and the media owner
- LinkedIn campaign-launch and campaign-wrap posts
- Investor decks and executive leadership updates
- Agency case studies proving execution at scale
- Recap videos and short clips for social and email
- Market-by-market reporting across a city or the country
Built to run at scale
- Single boards, full market buys, or nationwide flights
- Consistent framing and edit across every location
- Straight-on board frames plus wide context of the highway and traffic
- Drone video clips and short recap edits from the same visit
- Shot around traffic, sun angle and posting dates
- Delivered market-tagged and web-ready within days of posting
Recent work
Building heroes, branded facades, and completed builds.
Oracle — waterfront technology campus
Full-campus coverage · building hero & completed build photography
We captured Oracle's waterfront technology campus end to end — the curved glass facade, the courtyard, building signage, and the full site from the water. The library was built for their website, for the screens, TVs, and monitors running inside the campus, and as a ready reference set they can hand to press and outlets any time the waterfront campus comes up.
Who this is for
- Sign manufacturers & installation companies
- Out-of-home & billboard operators
- National retail & franchise brands
- Property owners & facility managers
- Corporate campuses & institutions
- Awning, lighting & exterior fabrication trades
How it runs
- 01
Scope call
You send the locations, the sign types, and what the imagery has to prove. 30 minutes.
- 02
Capture day
Aerial and ground coverage scheduled for the right light — including dusk and night for illuminated work.
- 03
Production
HDR-edited stills, aerial and ground clips, and vertical cuts delivered in days, not weeks.
- 04
Delivery
An organized online gallery your team, your client, and your landlord can all pull from.
The IRL Marketing difference
I market real-life businesses doing real-world work.
I don’t sell abstract brand strategy. I show up on the site, on the floor, and in the field, capture the work you and your crew are actually doing, and turn it into marketing that moves a business outcome — leads, contracts, capital, and revenue you can point to.
Built for real-life businesses
Crews, sites, equipment, patients, product lines. We work in environments where the value is physical and the schedule is real — not studio sets and stock footage.
We highlight the actual work
Your credibility lives in the work itself. We capture it as it happens and produce it into proof buyers, investors, and referral partners can see.
Measured on business outcomes
Every asset has a job: fill the pipeline, shorten the sales cycle, or close the deal. We report on what moved, not on impressions.
Who we work with
Industries where proving ROI on marketing isn’t optional. If your spend has to show up in the pipeline, that’s exactly who we build for.
Who you're working with
Abel Acuña
Founder · IRL Marketing
Abel Acuña is a GTM operator, marketing consultant, and former U.S. Intelligence Officer whose career has moved between three worlds that rarely overlap: national security, high-growth technology, and visual storytelling.
His work behind the camera began at The Hotchkiss School, an international boarding school, where he received recognition at the Kent Film Festival and the Santa Barbara Film Festival. He continued to develop his visual practice at Harvard University, earning corporate recognition from Facebook for his filmmaking.
That foundation in image and narrative carried into marketing and technology. Abel was an international technology co-founder in Korea and an early go-to-market leader at Vanta, Amherst ($16.4B AUM), and KakaoTalk. Over the last decade he has scaled startups from zero, launched products into unfamiliar markets, and helped business units reach their first 100K customers or $50M in new sales.
That operating standard eventually carried into national security, where he supported international clandestine operations — work that demanded exceptional attention to detail, absolute discretion with confidential information, and rapid decision-making in dynamic environments to achieve operational objectives. He remains T/S SCI security clearance capable.
Throughout, Abel built a parallel practice behind the camera. He is an FAA-certified commercial drone pilot — Part 107 (UAV, sUAV, sUAS), License #4747275, carrying $1M+ in flight insurance — and shoots on Sony cinema cameras.
Today he leads IRL Marketing, an outsourced content marketing partner for real-life businesses: healthcare, manufacturers, trades, hospitality, and commercial real estate. Real footage of real operations, no stock and no staging. Still Human. Real Results.
He is a graduate of Harvard University and The Hotchkiss School, with a background in Political Science and the Visual Arts — an education that still shapes how he thinks about persuasion, narrative, and the difference between attention and trust.
Get a Quote
What are you working on?
Tell us a little about your business and we'll build a custom scope.
Your work email
Let's document your outdoor program.
Send us the locations and sign types. We'll come back with a capture plan and a flat price per site.