Notes on Kite Aerial Photography: Photo Gallery
In July 1997
I received an e-mail from Marc Guetre of Paris, France. Marc wrote to say that he had been
taking kite photographs for 15 months and that he visited this WWW site now and
then. Turns out he was coming to the California for business and he wondered if we
could meet to discuss matters KAP. We arranged a rendezvous and a few weeks later
took a KAPers tour of San Francisco. These photographs were taken during a stop in
the Marin Headlands.
KAP portraits of Marc at Battery Rathbone-McIndoe
in the Marin Headlands. I often bring visitors to this fine spot including Wolfgang
Bieck. It is become a de rigour touchstone on the KAP worldwide tour. (36K jpg left
and 36K jpg right, Canon 24-mm, September 1997).
I am still quite interested in kite lofted cameras as portrait instruments.
It seems to me that people relate quite differently to a KAP camera (no human,
floating in the air) than they do to a handheld camera (closely associated with its
holder). Here we have two views of Marc, one in my oft used gun mount setting and
the other while he stands on the roof of a bunker. The second shot was taken as I
stood twenty feet below on a concrete apron.
Images taken during our outing: a parked Harley Davidson motorcycle and standing at the
edge of the 400-foot bluff. (35K jpg, Canon 24-mm left and 34K jpg, Canon 15-mm
right, September 1997).
While we stopped to see the sights I sent a kite and camera skyward and shot through a
very quick roll. This gave Marc a chance to see the rig in action and to discuss
process. While I was photographing the familiar surrounds of Battery
Rathbone-McIndoe, Marc was photographing me. The images below show me as I was
taking the images above.
Photographs taken by Marc showing me in the
act of taking the two photographs above. On the left I am positioning the rig above
the motorcycle. I should have biased more for the shadow. On the right I am
flying the fisheye just beyond the edge of the bluff (28K jpg left and 24K jpg right,
Canon 24-mm, September 1997).
The image on the right above shows the relationship between Battery Rathbone-McIndoe and
San Francisco. This view, facing slightly south of east, includes the south pylon of
the Golden Gate Bridge and the tall buildings of downtown San Francisco.
Your author standing in a mount that
once held a defensive gun (34K jpg, Canon 24-mm, September 1997).
It was very pleasant to have a visit with Marc and to talk
about how he approaches the various challenges of KAP. As an electrical engineer his
mind turns to interesting electronic approaches to our puzzles. It was also
fun to have someone else handle the kite while I roamed with the transmitter (left).
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All rights reserved. Revised: Monday, August 02, 1999
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