PROJECTS: KI TE AERIAL PHOTOGRAPH Y

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A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A KITE AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHER

It’s a sunny Saturday morning in Berkeley, Cali- kite is quite active a hundred feet up, the movement fornia. I check the Bay Area winds website and learn at the Picavet is modest. This is partly due to the that a sea breeze is coming from the northwest. stretch of the Dacron line absorbing the load, but My kite aerial photography (KAP) gear is already mostly it’s just the geometry of having the Picavet packed and in the trunk of my VW Cabriolet. The re- within 15 feet of the kiteline’s anchor point. When mote control batteries are charged and ready to go. launching, I always attach the Picavet’s “hangups” in Around noon I head for the Aeroschellville airstrip a position that places the Picavet’s cross just within north of San Francisco Bay. The owner of a Swift reach — say about 8 feet above the ground. Even airplane wants me to take some photographs of his if the kite dives 50 feet, the camera will still be above craft while it is parked on the ground, and he has ground level. So I proceed by attaching the camera secured permission from airport authorities to allow cradle to the Picavet and making a final check of me to fly the kite at the airstrip. During the delight- rig movement functions and the camera’s settings: ful, top-down drive north, I’m watching trees, water auto-exposure mode, focus on automatic. surfaces, and so on to get a sense of the wind.

After arriving at the airstrip, it takes less than a minute to clip the fuzzy tail to the kite’s harness and to clip the kite’s bridle to the kiteline. With a leather glove on the hand I use to hold the kiteline, I launch the kite, a Sutton Flowform 16, and spool out a quick 100 feet of line. Though the kite is behaving somewhat erratically, it has sufficient pull to lift the camera rig. It will be a challenge to avoid motion blur in the images. I would normally send the kite much higher before attaching the camera to see if I can find smoother air at 300 or 400 feet. But this strategy is not prudent at an airstrip, and besides, we would have to seek additional permissions.

Once the camera is hanging from the rig, I unclip the kiteline from the carabiner and gain a little working height by letting out kiteline. As stable as the launching arrangement is, I generally feel better when the camera is clear of the ground. With the camera rig about 30 feet above the ground, I work with the Swift owner to take a series of bird’s-eye view and oblique shots of the airplane with the camera gaining no more than 40 feet of altitude

It’s time to rig the camera, so I clip the kiteline off to a carabiner tied to a post. From my KAP gear bag I pull out a Canon Rebel X, its 24mm lens, and my handbuilt, radio-controlled camera cradle. I spend a minute getting a fresh roll of film into the Canon and the lens-hood mounted on the lens. Then I complete a quick ground check of the remote control radio gear — used to control the orientation and shutter of the camera when it’s in the air — by powering up the receiver. Convinced the frequency is clear, I turn on my transmitter and check the camera cradle’s rotation functions.

Today’s windy conditions invite the inevitable question, “How do you establish a stable platform that you actually trust your camera to?” Even though the

Photography courtesy of Charles C. Benton

56 Make: Volume 01