Notes on Kite Aerial Photography: Photo Gallery
The Pigeon Point lighthouse tower as seen from
the ground (23K jpg).
On a fine
October weekend Claudia and I drove down Highway 1 to pick
Charlie and Thomas up from a Boy Scout camping trip. We allowed
extra time to stop and take a few KAP shots. The trip marked the
field debut of my new KAP rig #2, a camera cradle built around a
Canon Rebel X with a 24-mm lens. When we stopped at Pigeon Point
the fog had just cleared from the shore to reveal the late
afternoon sun. Out came the Sutton Flowform 30 which flew well in
a 15 mph breeze. The new rig performed well and we shot a quick
roll in the thirty minutes available.
The Pigeon Point Lighthouse located between San
Francisco and Santa Cruz (47K jpg left and 62K jpg right).
Perched on a bluff on the Central
California coast, 50 miles south of San Francisco, the 110-foot
Pigeon Point Lighthouse, one of the tallest lighthouses in
America, has been guiding mariners since 1872. The associated
keepers' housing was restored as a hostel by HI-AYH, California
Department of Parks and Recreation, and the U.S. Coast Guard.
We're talking cheap rates here, and a private hot tub on the tip
of Pigeon Point (details at the hostel web site). From the boardwalk behind the fog
signal building, you can watch for gray whales on their annual
migration between January and April. This is vintage, beautiful
California. The hostel has gender separated rooms plus some
private ones that are booked months in advance!
You can find additional lighthouse information at the Lighthouse and Lightships Pointers Page.
The 110-foot-tall lighthouse tower as seen from
about twice that height (57K jpg).
It was great to get the new rig
in the air. As it turns out this was also the first flight for a
new spool of black 200# dacron kiteline. As the wind began to
pull the Sutton 30 with vigor I started to appreciate the irony
of conducting my first flight over salt water on new line.
Happily, the flight was a success as knots, line, and cradle
performed well. This shot shows the lighthouse and the south edge
of the point.
View of the ocean's edge to the north of the
lighthouse (53K jpg).
Land near the lighthouse is productive farmland. Here the fields extend almost to ocean's edge which makes for an interesting coastline. Our Plymouth van is the furthest car visible in the image. We launched kite and camera from the iceplant strip between road and beach. Power lines paralleled the road as did the wind so we took care to keep well clear of this hazard.
A view showing our flying position on the
bluff. Claudia and I are visible in the middle of the left edge
of the image (61K jpg).
In this closer view of our flying site you can see the transition from crops to road to iceplant, bluff, beach, and ocean. My new rig provides, as a first for me, the capacity to take vertical format oblique shots. I first saw this use of a fourth radio channel in Wolfgang Bieck's rig last summer. You will probably be seeing quite a few vertical format shots in the next gallery pages as I explore this new feature.
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Comments to author: crisp@socrates.berkeley.edu . All content,
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images contained throughout are Copyright (C) 1995 - 2005 by Charles C. Benton
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All rights reserved. Revised: Saturday, October 06, 2001
URL:
http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/~cris/kap/gallery/gal50.html