Art Hop From Above from VCAM Vermont on Vimeo.

Hey, South End artists and art lovers: Anyone happen to notice a buzzing sound at the 2013 South End Art Hop earlier this month? No, it wasn’t the late-season mosquitoes or all that free supermarket wine, but a new drone owned and operated by the Burlington-based nonprofit Vermont Community Access Media (VCAM). Clearly, drones aren’t just for police surveillance and taking out high-value Taliban targets anymore.

Matt Goudey, VCAM’s video technology coordinator, recently purchased a “DJI Quadcopter” for the organization. As the name suggests, the $650 model-plane-size chopper has four propellers and is operated with a remote control. This one is also outfitted with a wide-angle digital video camera for capturing aerial footage.

Staff Writer Ken Picard is a senior staff writer at Seven Days. A Long Island, N.Y., native who moved to Vermont from Missoula, Mont., he was hired in 2002 as Seven Days’ first staff writer, to help create a news department. Ken has since won numerous regional and national awards for his features, profiles and investigative stories and had his work picked up by international news outlets. He was the first journalist to shine a light on the thousands of undocumented workers in Vermont’s dairy...