Kite Aerial Photography (KAP)

What's KAP and Why KAP?

Well...Before what, for me why is a bigger deal. I like taking pictures. But i don't own a DSLR camera. I'm more or less attached to compact cameras and my good old Minolta Maxxum 550 Sİ. I like taking pictures that allows me to look at them later and try to get the feeling of the best presentation of the place. So this led me to get into Panaromic pictures. See the panaromic section of my site (link here).

I have a niece. And one day we realized she's never ever had a kite...And then the whole thing broke :) At the moment i don't have any photos taken by my cap rig, because i don't have one. It's not complete yet. I had to deal with different kinds of weird-weird- problems but i like that feeling of messing with things that many people call -crazy-. At least at the social norms of the society i'm living in...

Wikipedia describes KAP as follows.

"Kite aerial photography (KAP) is a hobby and a type of photography. A camera is lifted using a kite and is triggered either remotely or automatically to take aerial photographs. The camera rigs can range from the extremely simple, consisting of a trigger mechanism with a disposable camera, to complex apparatus using radio control and digital cameras. On some occasions it can be a good alternative to other forms of aerial photography."

As the name implies, KAP is Kite Aerial Photography. Simple huh? Kite, camera, done...

It creates beautiful pictures of where ever you can nail your kite to the clouds. As a mile stone of the whole thing and pay the respect to frontiers, here comes an important image.

Just three weeks after the 1906 Earthquake, professional photographer George Lawrence snapped his famous photograph, “San Francisco in Ruins,” from a 49-pound camera raised 1,000 feet above the bay with a train of Conyne kites.

Few links which are must for me and decreased the pain/sweat and tears while trying to understand what's what.

(1) http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/

Probably the most complete guidelines are here. It's extensive and the forums provide insights for many different KAP approaches.

The site is by Charles C. Benton, Professor of Architecture University of California at Berkeley

(2)http://scotthaefner.com/kap/ Beautiful collection of his photos and some ideas for KAP imagery.

(3)http://www.kiteplans.org/ Claims to be the biggest kite plan site online. Don't know about it but sure there are good kites. I'd advice a kite-builder to check if the real authors site is online because some of the kites on kiteplans are updated by their authors but not mirrored on kiteplans.

So, if you are still with me up to this line, then it's time to see my simple kites.