Notes on Kite Aerial Photography: Background
During the summer of 1998 I was fortunate to have Notes on Kite Aerial Photography selected as a Pick of the Week by Yahoo and a What's New Site by AltaVista. Beyond providing a nice little stress test for the College's new WWW server these exposures also made a number of intersting contacts for the site. Among these was Patrick Flaherty, a San Francisco-based producer for the Ziff Davis Television Channel (ZDTV). Patrick asked if I would be willing to do an interview and we agreed to meet at the San Francisco Waterfront the following week. Additional images from this session are available in a gallery page.
Your headless author and the ZDTV crew. From left to right are producer
Patrick Flaherty, Assistant Tom Anderson, cameraman Jacy Lochkhart, and reporter SuChin
Pak. SuChin doing an admirable job with the camera's controls. (35K jpg, Canon
24-mm, October 1998).
It is fun to watch an interview team at work. They have to
size up the subject and the setting then develop a quick shooting plan. In our case they
decided for some basic interview while I launched the kite and camera followed by a quick
KAP session photographing the nearby boats. This was followed by a wrap up interview and
then all the strange little details like the "response shots" in which SuChin
nods her head with interest some minutes after the discussion has ended. It is an
asynchronous but logical world.
The wind was blowing well at the waterfront and I had flown a Sutton 16 for a while
waiting for the crew to arrive (they actually followed the kiteline to find me.) As they
hauled their equipment out I pulled the Sutton 16 down to swap for a Sutton 30. The Sutton
16 would have lifted the camera but there were occasional holes in the wind and a little
extra kite helps when the wind slackens for a couple of minutes.
Two views of our interview site. On the left is a view of the
Marina District and its fine waterfront edge. On the right is a view of the end of the
yacht basin with its fine old eucalyptus windbreak and the Golden Gate Bridge in the
background. These two images are slightly cropped which is rare for this site. Over 95% of
the images I post are uncropped. (49K jpg left and 36K jpg right, Canon 24-mm, October
1998).
The videotaping began with "footage" of me
launching the Sutton 30 and mounting the camera rig. I then showed SuChin how to control
the camera and she took a few shots with the camera near the ground. In the image below
you can see the Jacy, the cameraman, shooting behind us as we gaze upward toward the
camera. The water at the edge of the image is the San Francisco Bay.
This shot shows a scene that may well make it into the final cut of the
interview. SuChin is taking her first photograph as I explain the controls (41K jpg,
Canon 24-mm, October 1998).
Another contrasty shot of SuChin at the controls with me in the background doing my 'shadow of man holding ring' thing. We shot a couple of images of the man on the right as he was rigging his windsurfer. Turns out he is a physician with a WWW site and Patrick was interested a interview with him down the road. (34K jpg left and 48K jpg right, Canon 24-mm, October 1998).
At the end of the interview I asked if they had an idea when (and if) the story would run. Patrick said he would let me know and promised a videotape of the finished product. I enjoyed the process. Everyone looked like they were enjoying what they did. It always amazes me to watch the amount of work that goes into producing a 3 or 4 minute segment and I don't see the majority of the effort.
Images from the end of the
interview. The session lasted around 2.5 hours and the sun was pretty low when we
finished. When I took the image on the left SuChin commented that the light would probably
make her look a little weird. (33K jpg left and 47K jpg right, Canon 24-mm, October
1998).
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