Unfortunately, my story is much like yours. I had an old camera and thought "man..that would be neat to hook this to a kite." Little did I know it had been done for over a hundred years and by many many people all over the world.

Regardless, it was something for me to accomplish. Something none of my friends had done. Something I knew might make people raise an eyebrow while I could feel cool and say "yes..that is a kite. Yes it is a camera".

Add that to whatever it is about flying a kite. There is something magic about it. Kind of like staring at a campfire. You can do it for hours and not be bored.

From what I have read of your posts, it seems like you sort of had a progression to your KAP. First, the goal was to fly a camera and get *any* picture, then eventually, compose. For me that draws a parallel to many of life's experiences. Lots of people can be mediocre at something or not try. To become great at something it takes time and a few crashes along the way. Do it long enough and you can teach others like Brooks or Wind Watcher or Pierre (sorry if I left anyone out).

Maybe it has been a story written many times before. About football, mountain climbing, the Indiana Hoosiers, etc. Perhaps that is a stretch :)

I suppose this is a bit of a stream of consciousness as I ponder your question.

In any case, is it possible it becomes more than just KAP? is it a sense of identity? Exclusivity? Belonging? Doing something unique just to see if you can? Looking at something from a different perspective?

It is a good question.

Tom

this may not help at all, but I was 'forced' into KAP. In 2002 we moved house and our new house (actually a very old building) is built on a very steep slope. I wanted a picture of the house and gardens, but because of the slope there was (and still is) nowhere you can stand to take one. Nor was there anywhere nearby where a telephoto lens would do any better. Indeed the estate agent (realtor) photos of the house were hopeless.

For a couple of months I struggled with the idea of climbing a neighbouring tree, then with the idea of using it and pulleys to lift a camera, but it was clear I'd need some way of manipulating the camera remotely.

I'd always had kites and had an R/C set left over from 15 years earlier when I'd dabbled with radio-controlled gliders. The idea of using a kite to take an aerial photo somehow came into my head and I stumbled on Cris Benton's website and that was that.

Of course, if I'd known about 11 metre carbon-fibre carp poles back then I might never had got into KAP!

WW put it beautifully.

Or...

It's like watching a campfire but in right mix with a dose of excitement, little sense of achievement because of doing something non trivial, imaging things from "impossible" perspective (too low for a crewed flying thing to high for standing) and for me also operating a thing (a kite) I made myself (so again sense of achievement).

rgds
\Seb

For myself, KAP just adds a beautiful dimension to life's existance.

We all dream of doing things outside our normal capabilities, such as flying and seeing the world from a bird's eye view. KAPing does that elegantly well at minimal expense.

Maybe I'm slightly different from most people in that my initial interest in KAP comes from being interested in Aerial Photography particularly in relation to Archaeology. Using a kite for me is just a means of getting a photograph. I have taken aerial photographs from light aircraft. While on a single flight you can quickly cover a large number of different locations over a wide area, the cost is prohibitive for me, not to mention the planning involved and issues with restrictions relating to airspace.

The few kites I had as a kid - bought single liners, in every instance that I can recall either the string snapped or the end of the line was not tied to the winder resulting in quickly lost kites. So I didn't develop a great interest in kites at that time.

Through the 1990s, both privately and as an Air Cadet I did a bit of flying, occasionally some aerial photography, I've found some aerial photos from 1994 and 1997.

My awareness of Kite Aerial Photography began around 2000 while at university doing a science degree in Archaeology. I found a few references to KAP just by simply reading up on aerial photography but there was nothing in the university library specifically on KAP. Using the internet a quick YAHOO! search led me to Cris Bentons Notes on Kite Aerial Photography - which firmly implanted the idea in my mind. At that time although digital cameras were available they were rather expensive, KAP would have to use a film camera - I was having trouble scraping together the money for the developing/printing of my normal photographs, and then there was the question of how to trigger the camera - so nothing really started at this time.

Moving on to 2007, my brother was clearing out a load of junk including a rather battered and broken radio control car, which I intercepted before the binmen took it away, the transmitter seemed to work and the steering servo worked - here was a remote camera trigger. I bought a small cheap Delta Conyne and went on holiday to Ardnamurchan with it, just to see how well it would fly, could I really fly a camera with a kite like this - well it flew great, it didn't have enough pull for a camera, but a larger one would - so a couple of months later a larger Delta Conyne arrived closely followed by a cheapish digital camera.

I cobbled together a simple KAP rig just to prove that the idea would work before putting effort into making something better - the rig after the important parts like the camera and RC bits (shutter trigger) was built of cardboard with some foam to protect the camera, along with pieces of paper, gaffer tape, string and a webbing strap with quick release buckle. I got a few photos of my house and garden on the 6th January 2008, and I was hooked. by the end of that month I was flying a UU rig, taking photographs of archaeological sites. I also quickly discovered that my new digital camera had a built in intervalometer - so I gave up with the RC gear.

I still find things to photograph, sometimes around home I might have great conditions that I sould take advantage of will be struggling to think where I might go fly.

There are many sites I fly, I like nothing better than some low sun casting shadows across earthworks or cropmarks in fields - and I spend a lot of time with these subjects. I'm also interested in other bits and pieces - sort of loosely have some projects or subjects even tick lists I'm working through for example the Arable Farming year, trying to capture all the mechanised processes of this group the one large thing I don't have is spraying - but that gets done in low wind and I don't really want to be near enough to be breathing spray or fumes (so that is a problem). Different styles of housing - we have a lot of that in the UK. Military/defensive structures/features - I have never deliberately targeted anything active although such sites may be visible in the background. I have a large file filled with KAP points of interest in Google Earth.

A lot of what I fly I suppose is driven by curiosity - the aerial photograph can show details and layouts that are hard to understand (or appreciate) on the ground. A camera in the air will show me what is the other side of that belt of trees or tall fence. I am well aware that 'curiosity is what killed the cat'.

WOW!

Thank you for all these ideas. This is more than I dared dream of.

JP, I had to laugh when I read yours. For a whole host of other reasons the main character has Tourette's Syndrome. (I had written that earlier KAP short story along with another non-kiting story in which the main character had TS. There were a number of similarities between the two characters, so I decided to chuck both of the earlier stories and combine their idea pools into one for a new story.) Some of the ideas you came up with don't easily work with the character, but the bulk of them do. I hope you don't mind my using them.

The story already has three characters who do KAP, so it's GREAT to have such a broad pool of ideas to draw from. It's good to see the similarities which drew some folks to KAP as well as others who came to KAP for wildly different reasons. This gives me a ton of ideas to pull from for their back-stories.

I hope no one minds if I use their ideas in the story. And I hope no one minds if they find a direct quote (or two!) in the story as well. A couple of statements really jumped out at me, and completely jive with the characters I've been building.

Keep the ideas coming!

Thanks, everyone.

Tom

Similar to the other archaeology guys above, my interest stems from my passion for archaeology.

I flew the odd kite as a child, but i never took it any further in my formative years. I moved onto electronics and the early computer systems and became a nerd.

I eventually joined the military and ended up on various interesting assignments around the globe. I used to love sitting on the edge of Chinook doorways gazing down at the earth. This is where my interest in aerial photography really began to formulate.

Eventually I moved away from the military and studied the pure sciences within an archaeological context. This lead to myself specialising in remote sensing, which I still perform today. I left the great learning centers to work as a field archaeologist to try and understand the practicality of the science I had learned in a field environment. One site was a small island in the mid-Atlantic. There were hundreds of slave graves that required removing prior to an airport run way being developed. I thought it would be an excellent idea to record the area from above using some sort of mobile aerial platform. After reading around I discovered the joy of KAP. I purchased all the relevant bits and bobs. The gear was stashed in my desk draw and instead of being sent to the sun for an extended holiday, I ended up on a survey across Shetland Isles for a month. The KAP kit did not see the light of day until I met John and Rosie Wells on their Ogilface site in West Lothian. They had their own KAP rig flying that day and I was instantly hooked and have not looked back.

I have since imaged many professional archaeological sites that will only ever appear in some dusty old publication and the odd presentation. Most of the images have been shown to rival, if not trump professional aerial photographers, which I am proud of.

Today I still use all of my tech gear, from quadcopters to radio controlled rigs, but I still prefer the simplicity of just flying a kite. I still love to run through the hundreds of images to just pick out that one 'money' shot that makes you think, ‘wow’ that is the one.

{Here is the description I posted on Flickr.com for the image above...}

"Page 143 from "The Penguin Book Of Kites" by David Pelham, ©1976. Purchased by me @ one of the museums in Washington, D.C., during a trip to there in 1980. I do not remember which museum, other than it was *not* the SMITHSONIAN AIR & SPACE {although I *did* visit A&S during that trip}.

For **me**, the images & writing on this page are the "Genesis" of KAP {Kite Aerial Photography}."

My inspiration came some in the late 70's after purchasing an issue of "Kite Lines" magazine "ceased publishing in the 90's" which had an article about George Lawrence and his photo of San Francisco after the earthquake and fire of 1906. That was my main driving influence for my own meager beginnings, thoughts of aerials of hunting areas and other activities that I engaged in at the time, some of which I can no longer do alone "or at all". Age is has been rearing it's ugly head, squashing some of my more strenuous activities (how did that happen?).

35mm film for most of my earliest shots, then to some homemade cameras in larger format film, I will try to add a couple of photos of these cameras to my bit of flikr stuff. I have come to digital cameras (not without some kicking and screaming), knowing that you gotten your shot has it's advantages. Though I did buy one of the devices, I can't embrace the idea of autoKAP, "shot gunning" an area to get your shot doesn't do it for me like the gratification of judging your aim to get the desired shot.

KAP has been the only way I have found that allows me to feel like I can fly like a bird. Let me tell you that as a kid, an umbrella off the porch roof didn't work for s***, nor did any other of my early flying "inventions".

My first kite was built by my father when I was 7. And I made graphics for that kite. I then built some kites myself -- some din't fly but some did. When I was a teenager someone gave me a book (in Polish) which title translated to english was "Playing with Kites". And in that book, besides many kite plans there were descriptions of various things to be lifted by a kite, and simple KAP setup was among them. A bit simlar to the picture mentioned by CGKiteman. That sparked the idea of making photos from above using a kite. Of course any camera was way too expensive for a 14 or 15 years old, esp during times when Iron Curtain was falling. But idea of lifting things by a kite sank in. In a few years with a few friends we constructed Universal Flying Platform i.e. a rhomboid box kite large enough to lift things. Kite was made from PE foil and alu tubing and was a bit heavy, so required quite a bit ow wind. The idea was not only to try take a camera aloft (by that time some old stocks of russian cameras could be held for something around 1 USD) but to make some pranks - especially making a UFO with blinkng lights and stuff. It was to meant to suddely raise (of course raised by a kite) from a field near a rarely used round where some drunken people tended to walk from time to time.

Time passed and I had my own kid and she really liked all the stuff which flies -- that motivated me. So I recreated our Universal Flying Platform with better materials (ripstop and carbon tubes). Then made simple pendulum rig and started KAPing.

rgds
\Seb