Haiku

 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the Japanese poetic form. For haiku poetry written in English, see Haiku in English. For other uses, see Haiku (disambiguation).

Haiku (俳句,  listen (help·info), haikai verse^?) (plural: haiku) is a very short form of Japanese poetry. It is typically characterised by three qualities:

• The essence of haiku is "cutting" (kiru).^[1] This is often represented by the juxtaposition of two images or ideas and a kireji ("cutting word") between them,^[2] a kind of verbal punctuation mark which signals the moment of separation and colors the manner in which the juxtaposed elements are related.
• Traditional haiku consist of 17 on (also known as morae), in three phrases of 5, 7 and 5 on respectively.^[3]
• A kigo (seasonal reference), usually drawn from a saijiki, an extensive but defined list of such words.

Modern Japanese haiku (現代俳句 gendai-haiku^?) are increasingly unlikely to follow the tradition of 17 on (syllables) or to take nature as their subject, but the use of juxtaposition continues to be honored in both traditional and modern haiku.^[4] There is a common, although relatively recent, perception that the images juxtaposed must be directly observed everyday objects or occurrences.^[5]
In Japanese, haiku are traditionally printed in a single vertical line while haiku in English often appear in three lines to parallel the three phrases of Japanese haiku.^[6]
Previously called hokku, haiku was given its current name by the Japanese writer Masaoka Shiki at the end of the 19th century.

Kiru and Kireji

Main article: Kireji

The essence of haiku is "cutting" (kiru).^[1] This is often represented by the juxtaposition of two images or ideas and a kireji ("cutting word") between them,^[2]
In Japanese haiku a kireji, or cutting word, typically appears at the end of one of the verse's three phrases. A kireji fills a role somewhat analogous to a caesura in classical western poetry or to a volta in sonnets. Depending on which cutting word is chosen, and its position within the verse, it may briefly cut the stream of thought, suggesting a parallel between the preceding and following phrases, or it may provide a dignified ending, concluding the verse with a heightened sense of closure.^[7]
The fundamental aesthetic quality of both hokku and haiku is that it is internally sufficient, independent of context, and will bear consideration as a complete work.^{[citation needed]} The kireji lends the verse structural support,^[8] allowing it to stand as an independent poem.^[9][10] The use of kireji distinguishes haiku and hokku from second and subsequent verses of renku which, although they may employ semantic and syntactic disjuncture, even to the point of occasionally end-stopping a phrase with a shōjoshi (少女詩 sentence ending particle), do not generally employ kireji.^{[citation needed]}
In English, since kireji have no direct equivalent, poets sometimes use punctuation such as a dash or ellipsis, or an implied break to create a juxtaposition intended to prompt the reader to reflect on the relationship between the two parts.
The kireji in the Bashō examples "old pond" and "the wind of Mt Fuji" are both "ya" (や). Neither the remaining Bashō example nor the Issa example contain a kireji although they do both balance a fragment in the first five on against a phrase in the remaining 12 on (it may not be apparent from the English translation of the Issa that the first five on mean "Edo's rain").

Syllables or on in haiku

Main article: On (Japanese prosody)

In comparison with English verse typically characterized by syllabic meter, Japanese verse counts sound units known as "on" or morae. Traditional haiku consist of 17 on, in three phrases of five, seven and five on respectively. Among contemporary poems teikei (定型 fixed form) haiku continue to use the 5-7-5 pattern while jiyuritsu (自由律 free form) haiku do not.^{[citation needed]} One of the examples below illustrates that traditional haiku masters were not always constrained by the 5-7-5 pattern.
Although the word "on" is sometimes translated as "syllable," one on is counted for a short syllable, two for an elongated vowel, diphthong, or doubled consonant, and one for an "n" at the end of a syllable. Thus, the word "haibun," though counted as two syllables in English, is counted as four on in Japanese (ha-i-bu-n); and the word "on" itself, which English-speakers would view as a single syllable, comprises two on: the short vowel o and the moraic nasal n̩. This is illustrated by the Issa haiku below, which contains 17 on but only 15 syllables. Conversely, some sounds, such as "kyo" (きょ) may look like two syllables to English speakers but are in fact a single on (as well as a single syllable) in Japanese.
The word onji (音字; "sound symbol") is sometimes used in referring to Japanese sound units in English^[11] although this word is no longer current in Japanese.^{[citation needed]} In Japanese, each on corresponds to a kana character (or sometimes digraph) and hence ji (or "character") is also sometimes used as the count unit.^{[citation needed]}
In 1973, the Haiku Society of America noted that the norm for writers of haiku in English was to use 17 syllables, but they also noted a trend toward shorter haiku.^[12]
Some translators of Japanese poetry have noted that about 12 syllables in English approximate the duration of 17 Japanese on.^[13]

Kigo

Main article: Kigo

A haiku traditionally contains a kigo, a word or phrase that symbolizes or implies the season of the poem and which is drawn from a saijiki, an extensive but prescriptive list of such words.
Kigo are often in the form of metonyms^{[citation needed]} and can be difficult for those who lack Japanese cultural references to spot.^{[citation needed]} The Bashō examples below include "kawazu", "frog" implying spring, and "shigure", a rain shower in late autumn or early winter. Kigo are not always included in non-Japanese haiku or by modern writers of Japanese "free-form" haiku.^{[citation needed]}

Examples

The best-known Japanese haiku^[14] is Bashō's "old pond":

古池や蛙飛び込む水の音

ふるいけやかわずとびこむみずのおと (transliterated into 17 hiragana)

furuike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto (transliterated into romaji)

This separates into on as:

fu-ru-i-ke ya (5)

ka-wa-zu to-bi-ko-mu (7)

mi-zu-no-o-to (5)

Translated:^[15]

old pond . . .

a frog leaps in

water's sound

Another haiku by Bashō:

初しぐれ猿も小蓑をほしげ也

はつしぐれさるもこみのをほしげなり

hatsu shigure saru mo komino wo hoshige nari^[16]

This separates into on as:

ha-tsu shi-gu-re (5)

sa-ru mo ko-mi-no wo (7)

ho-shi-ge na-ri (5)

Translated:

the first cold shower

even the monkey seems to want

a little coat of straw

This haiku by Bashō illustrates that he was not always constrained to a 5-7-5 on pattern. It contains 18 on in the pattern 6-7-5 ("ō" or "おう" is treated as two on.)

富士の風や扇にのせて江戸土産

ふじのかぜやおうぎにのせてえどみやげ

fuji no kaze ya ōgi ni nosete Edo miyage^[17]

This separates into "on" as:

fu-ji no ka-ze ya (6)

o-o-gi ni no-se-te (7)

e-do mi-ya-ge (5)

Translated:

the wind of Mt. Fuji

I've brought on my fan!

a gift from Edo

This haiku by Issa^[18] illustrates that 17 Japanese on do not always equate to 17 English syllables ("nan" counts as two on and "nonda" as three.)

江戸の雨何石呑んだ時鳥

えどのあめなんごくのんだほととぎす

edo no ame nan goku nonda hototogisu

This separates into "on" as,

e-do no a-me (5)

na-n go-ku no-n-da (7)

ho-to-to-gi-su (5)

Translated:

how many gallons

of Edo's rain did you drink?

cuckoo

Origin and development

From renga to renku to haiku

Main articles: Renga and Renku

Hokku is the opening stanza of an orthodox collaborative linked poem, or renga, and of its later derivative, renku (or haikai no renga). By the time of Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), the hokku had begun to appear as an independent poem, and was also incorporated in haibun (a combination of prose and hokku), and haiga (a combination of painting with hokku). In the late 19th century, Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) renamed the standalone hokku to haiku.^[19] The latter term is now generally applied retrospectively to all hokku appearing independently of renku or renga, irrespective of when they were written, and the use of the term hokku to describe a stand-alone poem is considered obsolete.^[20]

Bashō

Main articles: Matsuo Bashō and Hokku

In the 17th century, two masters arose who elevated haikai and gave it a new popularity. They were Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) and Ueshima Onitsura (ja) (1661–1738). Hokku is the first verse of the collaborative haikai or renku, but its position as the opening verse made it the most important, setting the tone for the whole composition. Even though hokku had sometimes appeared individually, they were always understood in the context of renku.^[21] The Bashō school promoted standalone hokku by including many in their anthologies, thus giving birth to what is now called "haiku". Bashō also used his hokku as torque points within his short prose sketches and longer travel diaries. This subgenre of haikai is known as haibun. His best-known work, Oku no Hosomichi, or Narrow Roads to the Interior, is counted as one of the classics of Japanese literature^[22] and has been translated into English extensively.
Bashō was deified by both the imperial government and Shinto religious headquarters one hundred years after his death because he raised the haikai genre from a playful game of wit to sublime poetry. He continues to be revered as a saint of poetry in Japan, and is the one name from classical Japanese literature that is familiar throughout the world.^[23]

Buson

Main article: Yosa Buson

Grave of Yosa Buson

The next famous style of haikai to arise was that of Yosa Buson (1716–1783) and others such as Kitō, called the Tenmei style after the Tenmei Era (1781–1789) in which it was created.
Buson is recognized as one of the greatest masters of haiga (an art form where painting is combined with haiku or haikai prose). His affection for painting can be seen in the painterly style of his haiku.^[24]

Issa

Main article: Kobayashi Issa

No new popular style followed Buson. However, a very individualistic, and at the same time humanistic, approach to writing haiku was demonstrated by the poet Kobayashi Issa (1763–1827), whose miserable childhood, poverty, sad life, and devotion to the Pure Land sect of Buddhism are evident in his poetry. Issa made the genre immediately accessible to wider audiences.

Shiki

Main article: Masaoka Shiki

Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) was a reformer and modernizer. A prolific writer, even though chronically ill during a significant part of his life, Shiki disliked the 'stereotype' haikai writers of the 19th century who were known by the deprecatory term tsukinami, meaning 'monthly', after the monthly or twice-monthly haikai gatherings of the end of the 18th century (in regard to this period of haikai, it came to mean 'trite' and 'hackneyed'). Shiki also criticized Bashō.^{[citation needed]} Like the Japanese intellectual world in general at that time, Shiki was strongly influenced by Western culture. He favored the painterly style of Buson and particularly the European concept of plein-air painting, which he adapted to create a style of haiku as a kind of nature sketch in words, an approach called shasei (写生), literally 'sketching from life'. He popularized his views by verse columns and essays in newspapers.
Hokku up to the time of Shiki, even when appearing independently, were written in the context of renku.^[21] Shiki formally separated his new style of verse from the context of collaborative poetry. Being agnostic,^[25] he also separated it from the influence of Buddhism. Further, he discarded the term "hokku" and proposed the term haiku as an abbreviation of the phrase "haikai no ku" meaning a verse of haikai,^[26] although the term predates Shiki by some two centuries, when it was used to mean any verse of haikai.^{[citation needed]} Since then, "haiku" has been the term usually applied in both Japanese and English to all independent haiku, irrespective of their date of composition. Shiki's revisionism dealt a severe blow to renku and surviving haikai schools. The term "hokku" is now used chiefly in its original sense of the opening verse of a renku, and rarely to distinguish haiku written before Shiki's time.^{[citation needed]}

Haibun

Main article: Haibun

Haibun is a combination of prose and haiku, often autobiographical or written in the form of a travel journal.

Haiga

Main article: Haiga

Haiga is a style of Japanese painting based on the aesthetics of haikai, and usually including a haiku. Today, haiga artists combine haiku with paintings, photographs and other art.

Kuhi

The carving of famous haiku on natural stone to make poem monuments known as kuhi (句碑) has been a popular practice for many centuries. The city of Matsuyama has more than two hundred kuhi.

Haiku movement in the West

The earliest westerner known to have written haiku was the Dutchman Hendrik Doeff (1764–1837), who was the Dutch commissioner in the Dejima trading post in Nagasaki, during the first years of the 19th century.^[27] One of his haiku:^[28]

inazuma no kaina wo karan kusamakura

lend me your arms, fast as thunderbolts, for a pillow on my journey.

Although there were further attempts outside Japan to imitate the "hokku" in the early 20th century, there was little understanding of its principles.^{[citation needed]} Early Western scholars such as Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850–1935) and William George Aston were mostly dismissive of hokku's poetic value. One of the first advocates of English-language hokku was the Japanese poet Yone Noguchi. In "A Proposal to American Poets," published in the Reader magazine in February 1904, Noguchi gave a brief outline of the hokku and some of his own English efforts, ending with the exhortation, "Pray, you try Japanese Hokku, my American poets!" At about the same time the poet Sadakichi Hartmann was publishing original English-language hokku, as well as other Japanese forms in both English and French.
In France, haiku was introduced by Paul-Louis Couchoud around 1906. Couchoud's articles were read by early Imagist theoretician F. S. Flint, who passed on Couchoud's (somewhat idiosyncratic) ideas to other members of the proto-Imagist Poets' Club such as Ezra Pound. Amy Lowell made a trip to London to meet Pound and find out about haiku. She returned to the United States where she worked to interest others in this "new" form. Haiku subsequently had a considerable influence on Imagists in the 1910s, notably Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" of 1913, but, notwithstanding several efforts by Yone Noguchi to explain "the hokku spirit," there was as yet little understanding of the form and its history.^{[citation needed]}

Blyth

Main article: Reginald Horace Blyth

R.H. Blyth was an Englishman who lived in Japan. He produced a series of works on Zen, haiku, senryū, and on other forms of Japanese and Asian literature. In 1949, with the publication in Japan of the first volume of Haiku, the four-volume work by Blyth, haiku were introduced to the post-war English-speaking world. This four-volume series (1949–52) described haiku from the pre-modern period up to and including Shiki. Blyth's History of Haiku (1964) in two volumes is regarded as a classical study of haiku. Today Blyth is best known as a major interpreter of haiku to English speakers. His works have stimulated the writing of haiku in English.

Yasuda

Main article: Kenneth Yasuda

The Japanese-American scholar and translator Kenneth Yasuda published The Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature, History, and Possibilities in English, with Selected Examples in 1957. The book includes both translations from Japanese and original poems of his own in English, which had previously appeared in his book titled A Pepper-Pod: Classic Japanese Poems together with Original Haiku. In these books Yasuda presented a critical theory about haiku, to which he added comments on haiku poetry by early 20th-century poets and critics. His translations apply a 5–7–5 syllable count in English, with the first and third lines end-rhymed. Yasuda considered that haiku translated into English should utilize all of the poetic resources of the language.^{[citation needed]} Yasuda's theory also includes the concept of a "haiku moment" based in personal experience, and provides the motive for writing a haiku. His notion of the haiku moment has resonated with haiku writers in North America, even though the notion is not widely promoted in Japanese haiku.

Henderson

Main article: Harold G. Henderson

In 1958, An Introduction to Haiku: An Anthology of Poems and Poets from Bashô to Shiki by Harold G. Henderson was published by Doubleday Anchor Books. This book was a revision of Henderson's earlier book titled The Bamboo Broom (Houghton Mifflin, 1934). After World War II, Henderson and Blyth worked for the American Occupation in Japan and for the Imperial Household, respectively, and their shared appreciation of haiku helped form a bond between the two.
Henderson translated every hokku and haiku into a rhymed tercet (a-b-a), whereas the Japanese originals never used rhyme. Unlike Yasuda, however, he recognized that 17 syllables in English are generally longer than the 17 on of a traditional Japanese haiku. Because the normal modes of English poetry depend on accentual meter rather than on syllabics, Henderson chose to emphasize the order of events and images in the originals.^{[citation needed]} Nevertheless, many of Henderson's translations were in the five-seven-five pattern.

English-language haiku

Main article: Haiku in English

The first haiku written in English was by Ezra Pound, published in 1913. Since then, the haiku has become a fairly popular form among English-speaking poets. English haiku can follow the traditional Japanese rules, but are frequently less strict, particularly concerning the number of syllables and subject matter.
The loosening of traditional standards has resulted in the term "haiku" being applied, perhaps wrongly, to brief English-language poems such as "mathemaku" and other kinds of pseudohaiku. Some sources claim that this is justified by the blurring of definitional boundaries in Japan.^[29]

Kay Ryan

 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kay Ryan
Ryan in 2011
Born	September 21, 1945 (age 69) San Jose, California, U.S.
Occupation	Poet, educator
Nationality	American
Period	1970s-present
Genre	Poetry
Notable works	The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (2010)
Notable awards	Guggenheim Fellowship (2004) Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (2004) United States Poet Laureate (2008–2010) Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (2011) MacArthur Fellowship (2011)
Partner	Carol Adair (1978-2009†)

Kay Ryan (born September 21, 1945) is an American poet and educator. She has published seven volumes of poetry and an anthology of selected and new poems. From 2008 to 2010 she was the sixteenth United States Poet Laureate.^[1] In 2011 she was named a MacArthur Fellow^[2] and she won the Pulitzer Prize.^[3]

Biography

Ryan was born in San Jose, California, and was raised in several areas of the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert.^[4] After attending Antelope Valley College, she received bachelor's and master's degrees in English from University of California, Los Angeles.^[5] Since 1971, she has lived in Marin County, California, and has taught English part-time at the College of Marin in Kentfield.^[6] Carol Adair, who was also an instructor at the College of Marin, was Ryan's partner from 1978 until Adair's death in 2009.^[7][8]
Her first collection, Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends, was privately published in 1983 with the help of friends.^[9] While she found a commercial publisher for her second collection, Strangely Marked Metal (1985), her work went nearly unrecognized until the mid-1990s, when some of her poems were anthologized and the first reviews in national journals were published.^[10] She became widely recognized following her receipt of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2004, and published her sixth collection of poetry, The Niagara River, in 2005.
In July 2008, the U.S. Library of Congress announced that Ryan would be the sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress for a one-year term commencing in Autumn 2008. She succeeded Charles Simic.^[1] In April 2009, the Library announced that Ryan would serve a second one-year term extending through May 2010.^[11] She was succeeded by W.S. Merwin in June 2010.^[12]

Poetry

Ryan at the 2011 International Sigma Tau Delta Convention in Pittsburgh, March 2011.

The Poetry Foundation's website characterizes Ryan's poems as follows: "Like Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore before her, Ryan delights in quirks of logic and language and teases poetry out of the most unlikely places. She regards the 'rehabilitation of clichés,' for instance, as part of the poet’s mission. Characterized by subtle, surprising rhymes and nimble rhythms, her compact poems are charged with sly wit and off-beat wisdom." J. D. McClatchy included Ryan in his 2003 anthology of contemporary American poetry.^[13] He wrote in his introduction, "Her poems are compact, exhilarating, strange affairs, like Satie miniatures or Cornell boxes. … There are poets who start with lived life, still damp with sorrow or uncertainty, and lead it towards ideas about life. And there are poets who begin with ideas and draw life in towards their speculations. Marianne Moore and May Swenson were this latter sort of artist; so is Kay Ryan."^[13]
Ryan's poems are often quite short. In one of the first essays on Ryan, Dana Gioia wrote about this aspect of her poetry. "Ryan reminds us of the suggestive power of poetry–how it elicits and rewards the reader’s intellect, imagination, and emotions. I like to think that Ryan’s magnificently compressed poetry – along with the emergence of other new masters of the short poem like Timothy Murphy and H.L. Hix and the veteran maestri like Ted Kooser and Dick Davis – signals a return to concision and intensity."^[10] Ryan tends to avoid using the personal "I" in her poetry, claiming that she "didn’t want confession. [She] didn’t want to be Anne Sexton."^[14] Though distanced, her work is often deeply introspective, analyzing both the nature of the mind^[15] and the ability of language to mold reality.^[16]
Many reviewers have noted an affinity between Ryan's poetry and Marianne Moore's.^[17]
In addition to the oft-remarked affinity with Moore, affinities with poets May Swenson, Stevie Smith, Emily Dickinson, Wendy Cope, and Amy Clampitt have been noted by some critics. Thus Katha Pollitt wrote that Ryan's fourth collection, Elephant Rocks (1997), is "Stevie Smith rewritten by William Blake" but that Say Uncle (2000) "is like a poetical offspring of George Herbert and the British comic poet Wendy Cope."^[18] Another reviewer of Say Uncle (2000) wrote of Ryan, "Her casual manner and nods to the wisdom tradition might endear her to fans of A. R. Ammons or link her distantly to Emily Dickinson. But her tight structures, odd rhymes and ethical judgments place her more firmly in the tradition of Marianne Moore and, latterly, Amy Clampitt."^[19]
Ryan's wit, quirkiness, and slyness are often noted by reviewers of her poetry, but Jack Foley emphasizes her essential seriousness. In his review of Say Uncle he writes, "There is, in short, far more darkness than 'light' in this brilliant, limited volume. Kay Ryan is a serious poet writing serious poems, and she resides on a serious planet (a word she rhymes with 'had it'). Ryan can certainly be funny, but it is rarely without a sting."^[20] Some of these disjoint qualities in her work are illustrated by her poem "Outsider Art", which Harold Bloom selected for the anthology The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988–1997.
Ryan is also known for her extensive use of internal rhyme. She refers to her specific methods of using internal rhyme as "recombinant rhyme." She claims that she had a hard time "tak[ing] end-rhyme seriously," and uses recombinant rhyme to bring structure and form to her work. As for other types of form, Ryan claims that she cannot use them, stating that it is "like wearing the wrong clothes."^[21]

Honors and awards

Ryan's awards include a 1995 award from the Ingram Merrill Foundation,^[1] the 2000 Union League Poetry Prize,^[22] the 2001 Maurice English Poetry Award for her collection Say Uncle,^[11] a fellowship in 2001 from the National Endowment for the Arts,^[23] a 2004 Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2004 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her poems have been included in three Pushcart Prize anthologies,^[24][25][26] and have been selected four times for The Best American Poetry;^[27][28][29] "Outsider Art" was selected by Harold Bloom for The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988–1997. Since 2006, Ryan has served as one of fourteen Chancellors of The Academy of American Poets.^[30] On January 22, 2011, Ryan was listed as a finalist for a 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award.^[31] On April 18, 2011, she won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, calling her collection The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (Grove Press) "a body of work spanning 45 years, witty, rebellious and yet tender, a treasure trove of an iconoclastic and joyful mind."^[3][32][33]
On September 20, 2011, Ryan was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, or "genius grant".^[2][34]
In 2013, she received a 2012 National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama.^[35]

Drone…is it what you thought?

Drone…is it what you thought?

---

Tuesday, June 16th, 2015

Samantha Bogle Marketing Coordinator

Quadcopter, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s), Unpiloted Air System (UAS’s) or the most recognized term, drone, are just a few of the many names describing this flying technology.  One of the first things people think of when they hear the word “drone” is the military drone such as a Predator, but what they don’t know is that the “drones” most widely used throughout the A/E/C industry aren’t like those at all.  Actually called a quadcopter, this flying technology only weighs about four pounds and has four propellers.  The popular military drone known as the Predator weighs approximately 1,130 pounds (empty weight) and has the capacity to fly up to 25,000 feet.  These larger drones are mostly used for research and intelligence and can go on long, unmanned flights which are out of the line of sight.
We interviewed a contractor within the industry who is using the quadcopters.  Dustin Burns, the IT Director at McCownGordon Construction, filled us in on how the company is using their quadcopter and the benefits they have seen thus far. They can only fly in the line of sight and are flown up to 200 feet high, even though they could fly up to 500 feet. So you can see the difference in what most people think of when they hear the word “drone” as opposed to the quadcopters that are being used within the A/E/C industry.
Safety
For McCownGordon one of the main benefits of the quadcopter is the life safety aspect of it. For example, when faced with a task of having to inspect an outside window on the 6^th floor due to a leak, it was a no brainer to give the quadcopter this task as opposed to putting one of their own employees in a lift or a crane to inspect the window in question. The quadcopter is up and back down on the ground within minutes, bringing still images and video footage of the 6^th floor window with it.  They can then assess those images and footage and decide the next plan of action.
In another case, McCownGordon had just finished removing lead paint and repainting an exterior soffit on a building when some of the paint started to peel.  For starters they needed to document that the paint was indeed peeling and then inspect it to see how the paint was coming off. (i.e. bubbling, chipping, etc.) In the past, before they had a quadcopter they had two options.  They would have sent an employee up a 24 foot ladder, to take photos, and basically go around the entire building doing this, or bring in a lift, which is a little bit safer and which of course would make the person mobile around the entire building.  With a quadcopter, they flew close to the soffit, circled the entire building, photo and video documented it in high definition, which only took about 15 minutes. Because they were able to use the quadcopter they were able to eliminate the need to put an employee on a ladder or in a lift, saving a substantial amount of money.
In any instance where the quadcopter is used, safety is top of mind.  Before every flight a multitude of factors are taken into consideration such as wind speed, sufficient amount of open acreage, number of people around during the flight and ensuring it will not be flying in a direct flight path of or in close distance to an airport.  They inspect the equipment thoroughly before each flight and get permission to conduct the flight (i.e. if they want to fly on a jobsite, they receive permission before doing so).
Construction
The quadcopter has also shown to be very beneficial for project progress.  It is a huge benefit to the contractor as well as the owner to be able to see aerial footage and still images of progress on the project site. The quadcopter also takes high definition video, which allows the project team to analyze and understand the stage of that particular project.  Another advantage is all the aerial footage and still images can be provided to the project owners for their own use.
Design
McCownGordon is preparing to use the quadcopter for creating 3D model views of a structure, along with using topography (the arrangement of the natural and artificial physical features of an area). For example, the quadcopter can survey a field, take that information back to the office, process it, and then give actual elevations. When evaluating a building, the quadcopter can measure the building and do takeoff for the building to collect the dimensions. It is similar to laser scanning but your end product is a photo of a building that is three dimensional and measurable.  You can then take that 3D model and import it into a program like Revit (Building Design Software), manipulate it and then start modeling from there.
Future
Even though the future is unknown, the use of the quadcopters, (UAV’s, UAS’s, drones) will become more and more prevalent.  The drone economy is poised to have explosive growth to the tune of a $140 billion market by 2020. (Cloud Tweaks)  The biggest benefit for McCownGordon is the safety advantage, but along with that, the cost savings has been huge.  Before using the quadcopter for aerial video footage and still images, they were paying approximately $850/month for aerial photography using a helicopter. Aside from the $850 they are saving per month, they have now eliminated the need to have a person in a helicopter thus proving another safety advantage.  Since the quadcopter, which McCownGordon uses, is around the $1,500 mark, if their quad copter takes two flights for aerial shots, it has paid for itself.
McCownGordon is adamant about life safety. This is not something to “play” around with and should be taken seriously. For example, for an individual flying the quadcopter as a hobby, there is no training or license required as long as they don’t fly it within 5 miles of an airport. If you use a quadcopter as a hobby be aware of the consequences and understand that it isn’t a toy.  For commercial use, the current U.S. law requires a case-by-case FAA certificate of authorization.