Notes on Kite Aerial Photography: Photo Gallery
Your author wading in the cool Pacific waters (26K jpg, Canon 24-mm, May 1997).
On a fine
May weekend Claudia and I found ourselves childfree by merit of a
Boy Scout camping trip. After working around the house on a hot
Berkeley day (rare weather for us) we headed for Pt. Reyes
seeking a respite from the weather. At Drake's Beach we found a
pleasant off-shore breeze and the much desired cooler
temperatures.
I took this shot with the Sutton 30 tied off to a canvas bag
filled with sand. It is rare for me to leave the kite tied off to
something and walk around with the transmitter. On this occasion
steady winds made it seem a reasonable course. One's ability to
compose is aided by this independence from the kiteline. In this
image I am wading in the surf while the Canon flies a hundred and
fifty feet or so over my head. The print shows the turbid water
on the ocean side of the wavelet in great detail. This turbulence
is less apparent in the attached JPG and almost invisible in the
small GIF above.
A fisheye view of the scalloped Drake's Beach. This south-facing beach receives good sun and is protected from the rough Pacific waters (33K jpg, Canon 15-mm, May 1997).
Drake's Beach is surrounded by
dairy land. Main access to the beach is achieved through a wash
between the beach's pleasant bluffs. In this image you can see
the parking area and a small building operated by the Park
Service. The beach always seems to have a scalloped profile --
one imagines there is a lateral current running down the beach at
times.
A quartet of images from above the Drake's Beach surf. From the upper left clockwise: a Canon 15-mm shot of Claudia (32K jpg) a Canon 24-mm shots of sunlit surf (29K jpg), hills and surf (24K jpg), and frothy backwash (51K jpg).
I was eager to fly the kite on this
particularly afternoon because similar conditions had produced
some of my
favorite KAP images at nearby Limantour Beach in 1995. So I set about taking images of
the ocean edge as it changed from moment to moment. We arrived
after 4 pm so the kite flying occurred during the fine light of
late afternoon. Each of these shots contains a human being or two
for scale.
Your author in a grazing light test shot (61K jpg, Canon 24-mm, May 1997).
This is one of my change-of-roll
test-to-see-if-things-are-working shots. The low, warm sun brings
out the footprint-scale texture of the sand. I made the track in
the lower right when dragging the sand filled canvas bag that
served as kite anchor that day.
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