ScenePhoto360, LLC

06/04/2026

👮 When people picture LiDAR in search and recovery, they often expect an "X-ray" that pinpoints exactly what we're looking for. That's not how it works — but the reality is arguably more powerful.

Of the several cold cases I have been working on, either through local law enforcement or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Bryce Borca case is still on my desk. I have no idea why, but for hours and days, over the years, I have played the "where the hell are you" game in my head. Fast forward to my new fascination with LiDAR, point clouds, and data manipulation and we are reaching the next juncture in solving cases. I recently scanned an area of interest identified by Law Enforcement.

🫸 A LiDAR point cloud, captured with optimal settings, becomes a permanent, high-resolution digital model of the terrain. From that single dataset we can derive slope, depression depth, water flow, vegetation structure, and more — and we can test each against an investigator's theory. The result isn't "there it is." It's something often more useful for a large, difficult site: a ranked, defensible "let's look here first."

But terrain shape is only part of the story. A LiDAR scan also records how each pulse of light bounces back, and that opens up even more ways to read a landscape:

Intensity & reflectivity: Every laser return carries a brightness value — how strongly that surface reflected the beam. Different materials reflect differently, so dry bone, bare soil, metal, fabric, and vegetation can each leave a distinct signature. It won't shout "here it is," but it can flag the spots that look different from everything around them — the anomalies worth a closer look.

Hillshade: Think of this as a simulated sun cast across the bare-earth model, creating light and shadow that make the ground's true shape pop into 3D. It reveals subtle features the naked eye and ordinary photos miss — old depressions, faint trails, banks, and ground disturbances — even beneath grass and light cover.

Layer these together and a flat, ordinary-looking field turns into a rich, readable map of clues.

That changes the game for logistics and resource deployment. Instead of grid-searching everything, teams can prioritize the highest-probability areas, deploy people and equipment where they matter most, and document their reasoning.

😁 And here's what excites me most about cold cases: the data is durable and reusable. A point cloud captured today can be re-analyzed years from now with more advanced AI and detection tools that don't even exist yet. The groundwork we lay now keeps paying off as technology matures.

The possibilities are genuinely promising — and we're still early.

Dakota County Sheriff's Office
Stillwater MN Police Department

06/01/2026

Vehicle service appointment turning into opportunity to start planning flights for a missing person case down in Burnsville/Eagan

05/27/2026

Perishable Facts: Why "Obvious" Can Be the Most Dangerous Word in Accident Litigation

Roadway Evidence is "Obvious"... until, well, it’s not. And by then, the Facts have Washed Away. 🌧️❌

In high-stakes litigation involving fatalities, fires, and commercial vehicles, relying on what "appeared obvious" during the initial investigation is a critical error.

⏳ "Obvious" is temporary. When a scene investigation moves quickly because the cause seems clear, objective protocols can sometimes relax. Fast forward to deposition time, and "obvious" has eroded into subjective memory.

Meanwhile, the fleeting physical evidence that could provide the verifiable truth is already gone—driven on, cleaned up, or repaired. By then, it’s simply too late to go back and get it.

Look closely at the attached high-resolution orthomosaic. This is the site of a fatal intersection crash involving a vehicle fire and a commercial truck interaction.

We deployed to this exact location ⏱️ less than 24 hours post-incident. We locked in the environmental facts before Murphy's Law and traffic took over. We didn't just take pictures; we secured the entire 3D environmental truth.

🔍 The Observation Challenge: If you look closely, you can see the initial law enforcement paint markers (the small orange paint lines). But compare that minimal documentation to the massive, perishable patterns that this high-resolution aerial capture preserved.

We are challenging your professional observation skills: Does anyone see critical roadway evidence—perishable facts like tire dynamics or fluid trails—that is completely unmarked in this image?

💬 Comment below with what unmarked evidence you see! ⬇️
The difference between "appearing obvious" and "verifiable spatial data" is how you win complex cases. Stop sifting through assumptions. Call us first to secure Day One data at www.scenephoto360.com.

05/27/2026

“They could be anywhere”

In the world of Search and Recovery, those words are uttered far too often. But as aerial technology and behavioral profiling evolve, it’s time to rethink that overwhelming concept.

With the right data, "they could be anywhere" becomes: "They aren't here, they probably aren't there—let's focus our resources right here."

How do we get there? LiDAR.

There is a common misconception that LiDAR just creates high-tech visual pictures. It doesn't. LiDAR is a pure data collection tool that captures millions of individual points in 3D space to build what is known as a point cloud.

If it’s hard to imagine, think of it like this: Imagine an Excel spreadsheet with millions of rows, where every single row contains dozens of columns of highly specific spatial information. That is a point cloud. It is raw, objective data.

Because it is data, we can manipulate it to eliminate the noise and find actual answers:

🪓 Stripping the Scene: We filter the data layers to create Digital Terrain Models (DTMs), digitally stripping away the dense trees and heavy vegetation to view the bare earth underneath.

🌲 Classifying the Scene: We can isolate and prioritize the ground itself versus everything above it (like canopy heights, buildings, and hills) or below it (like ravines hidden beneath brush). This lets us map terrain accessibility. No matter what the movies show, people can’t walk through a tree trunk, and they rarely force their way through a dense thicket when it's easier to walk around it. The data tells us where a human realistically could or couldn't travel.

🎯 Finding the Anomaly: By mapping slopes, precise elevations, and micro-terrain changes, we look for anomalies—disruptions or shapes that simply do not belong in a natural environment.

🛡️ Preserving the Facts: The original data is never altered or destroyed. If new evidence or behavioral clues come to light months later, we can re-filter and re-examine the exact same digital scene under an entirely new set of parameters.

As artificial intelligence and spatial processing advance, combining the raw power of LiDAR with high-resolution RGB imagery gives us the definitive ability to plan resources, direct ground teams with laser precision, and ultimately, create the opportunity for a faster, better outcome.

➡️ We keep looking.

05/19/2026

💡 Shining a New Light on Cold Cases

When traditional searches hit a wall, we change the perspective. How LiDAR is bringing new hope to cold case investigations.

Time and nature are the biggest enemies in a missing person investigation. Over the years, terrain changes, overgrowth takes over, and vital clues are hidden from the naked eye. When ground searches are exhausted, we have to look deeper.

Recently, I traveled to Erie, Pennsylvania, to assist investigators with a long-standing cold case.

This isn't just about flying a drone and taking pictures. Using advanced aerial LiDAR technology, we are able to send hundreds of thousands of laser pulses down through the dense forest canopy. This allows us to digitally strip away the vegetation and create a centimeter-accurate, 3D topographical map of the "bare earth" beneath.

We process this data to look for subtle spatial anomalies, unnatural depressions, or disruptions in the terrain that searchers on the ground simply cannot see.

Erie News Now recently covered our deployment and the collaborative effort to bring answers to this family.

📺 To watch the news segment: Click the link below, scroll down the page to the blue title bar, and click to play the video.

Whether it is mapping a complex crash scene for a legal client or volunteering time to search for a missing loved one, the core mission at ScenePhoto360 remains exactly the same: leveraging advanced forensic technology and objective data to uncover the truth.

🔎 We keep looking.



DJI

The Erie Police Department's cold case unit is using a high-tech drone to help investigate and unsolved case that is 43-years-old.

05/16/2026

✈️That’s a wrap on flight operations in Cleveland—all areas of interest are officially captured. Next phase: diving into 40–50 GB of data building and LiDAR manipulation.

💙It is deeply humbling to assist on these cold cases, using technology on grounds where I hope to bring answers and closure to families. The detectives I worked alongside are absolute bloodhounds; their relentless dedication to these cases is inspiring.

🛩️A special thank you to Delta Air Lines for comping my oversized baggage (drone equipment) fees to support the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s efforts. Time to head home and get to work on this data. 🔍

05/13/2026

Flying over to Cleveland to assist a local police department with a missing child cold case. Just want to send a shout out to Rebecca and Delta Air Lines!! Rebecca helped checked me in. Taking the m300 with me and she learned what I was doing and waived the oversized baggage cost!! There’s a reason I fly Delta! Also, thanks to officers who helped with scanning and such. rocks!

05/12/2026

The 24-Hour Advantage

When Hours Matter: Securing the Objective Truth of a Complex Crash Before It Disappears.

Yesterday, a tragic and highly complex collision occurred in Minneapolis involving a bus and a commercial truck. The incident included a vehicle fire, a fatality, and a secondary impact to a residential structure.

The forensic footprint of an event like this is massive. It is also incredibly perishable.

Within just 24 hours of the incident, we had the entire scene scanned and rendered into a fully navigable, centimeter precise measurable 3D digital twin.

Why does this rapid response matter to the legal world?

In high-stakes litigation, forensic evidence provides the objective truth. However, the reliability of that data depends entirely on when it is captured.

The "wait and see" strategy is a liability. Every hour you wait to request a scene scan, weather, ongoing traffic, and municipal cleanup crews are actively erasing the facts. Fluid trails wash away, tire friction marks fade, and structural debris is cleared. If you wait days, weeks, or months to document the scene, that physical evidence is gone forever.

An early deployment ensures that:
The Entire Scene is Preserved: We lock in the as close to the "as-was" condition of the roadway, the debris field, and the structural impact zone before it is altered.

Experts Get Better Data: Your reconstructionists aren't forced to guess from delayed, flat photographs. They get immediate access to a 3D environment where they can verify line-of-sight and measure impact vectors objectively.
Reliability is Maximized: Early capture provides the most robust, cross-examination-proof data possible.

Calling early doesn't just get you pictures; it gets you the entire preserved environment. Don't let time and traffic erase the facts of your next complex case.

🔗 Secure the objective data on Day One. Learn more about rapid reality capture at www.scenephoto360.com.

05/11/2026

Beyond the Flight — The Reality of the Search

There are no "magical find" moments. Just data, dedication, and the drive to bring answers home.

Currently, my focus is dedicated to the Eagan cold case of Bryce Borca (Bryce's Blessings). I've assisted with this case since 2022, and thankfully, aerial technology is ever-improving. The initial field work—capturing the high-resolution aerial imagery and LiDAR scans—is ongoing.

But flying the drone is the easy part.

Now comes the toughest and most time-consuming phase: data building, manipulation, and systematic examination. Television often portrays search and recovery as a sudden, magical discovery. The reality looks much more like the image attached to this post.

To conduct a truly exhaustive search of this terrain, we have built a data map with a massive 1cm per pixel resolution.

We have divided the search area into 700 individual 50' x 50' grids.

We are manually examining each grid, pixel by pixel, looking for anomalies, disruptions in the terrain, or anything that simply doesn't match the surrounding environment. From there, law enforcement or their designee will be given some areas of interest to do ground work examination.

There are absolutely no promises in this line of work, but there is always hope.

I am not one of the massive corporate drone companies, and I don't operate a fleet of the newest-generation drones. I am a specialized, independent operation. While I might not have a phone ringing off the hook with commercial clients every single day, I have the exact technical capability, the drive, and the law enforcement background to be much more than just a "guy who flies a drone."

ScenePhoto360 is built on a core principle: leveraging my career training to gather objective data, conduct rigorous forensic analysis, and give back to the community when it matters most. Whether I am volunteering my time for a family searching for answers or mapping a complex crash for a legal client, the standard of work remains exactly the same.

PS: Heading to PA this week to assist in another cold case!

We keep looking.
www.ScenePhoto360.com

05/05/2026

Very cool program -
Autistic =
Get to the water areas - AND STAGE someone there!
Get Airborne
Get the Canines tracking
https://www.facebook.com/reel/966520173020039

Woodbury Area Chamber of Commerce
Stillwater MN Police Department
Stillwater MN Fire Department
Washington County Sheriff's Office