The Falls Church-based Digital Design and Imaging Service, Inc, is featured in Wednesday’s digital edition of the New York Times for its work raising and operating a surveillance balloon and camera at 515 feet in the air to assist developers of an Upper East Side residential tower. It is expected to appear in Thursday’s print edition of the Times.

“DDIS’s lead photographer and project manager Ryan Shuler stitched a full immersive spherical virtual reality image above this proposed site. This is the first time such an interactive media and balloon based aerial platform has been developed and published,” DDIS president Curt Westergard stated. Westergard said he brought his company to Falls Church in 2002 because of a technology tax incentive

His said his company is expecting to expand their aerial services by helping the FAA’s Unmanned Aerial Systems test centers refine a drone “seek and avoid” technology.