Kite Aerial Photography - First Attempts

It took most of the summer to edit the approximately 1800 photos I took during my early summer trip to Ocracoke Island down to a more manageable 500. Why so many? Partially from my venture into Kite Aerial Photography, many attempts to capture the kids surfing for the first time, and accidentally leaving the camera on rapid fire when doing more composed shots.

We have started to traditionally take the long way to Ocracoke every summer by driving to the northern Outer Banks then down to Ocracoke. This is the way we arrived when we still lived in Vermont, and helps ease us into the full relaxation of island time. Our first stop is usually the Kitty Hawk Kites store in Nags Head, and depending on what we feel like we head north to explore Duck and Carolla, or just stat heading south to eventually catch the Ferry to Ocracoke. While we were at Kitty Hawk Kites I picked up a nice heavy lifting box kite thinking it would help with my plans for later in the week and some high strength kite line to go with it.

Once we got settled into the condo we had rented for the week I decided to assemble my new kite so I'd know how to put it together when we got to the beach. Fortunately I noticed one of the bars was broken and not repairable. We hit the beach the next morning, so I had to wait until evening to look for another kite. I found my way to the Kitty Hawk Kites store on Ocracoke where I was able to return the defective box kite. The store on Ocracoke is much smaller and did not have any of the same kites so I opted for another box kite of a different design.

The next day we hit the beach again and one I got tired of swimming I gave my new kite a try. Unfortunately the wind was light and the kite could hardly keep itself in the air, so I didn't even try attaching the camera rig. I had a small para-foil kite from previous trips to the beach so I gave that a try as well. In the light wind this kite flew great on its own, but was only able to lift the camera and rig a few feet off the ground. I wound up with about 50 close up shots of sand.

So, back to the kite shop I went. They were very helpful, and let me return my second kite without question, though I didn't exactly point out that I had flown it. This time my wife Kathie talked me into going with a power kite, which is basically a small parachute with two strings instead of one. Having two lines gives you the ability to steer the kite left and right, and perform basic stunts. Our thoughts were that it has a lot of pulling power and maybe we could modify it to a single line kite for my photography project. It turns out modifying the kite with the knowledge and tools we had at the time would not be easy. It did have a lot of pull when down low, but stalls when you send it up high. It is a lot of fun to fly though so we kept it. At one point it was actually pulling me forward, and I weigh a lot more than a small camera.

By now going to the kite shop is starting to get embarrassing, it's a small shop and the same guy was working every time I went in. Fortunately the service provided at Kitty Hawk Kites was great every time I went in. Sure, it would have been better if they had found me the kite I really needed the first time, but I had a hard time explaining exactly what I was doing. This time Kathie found a kite called a "Power Sled" which had packaging claiming to have lifting capabilities while being easy to fly. We had actually looked at this kite earlier in the week, but somehow missed that it actually said it had lifting capabilities.

This kite lifted the camera rig with ease and could quickly pull it up as high as I wanted it to go. For the first flight I had the camera pointed straight down, which may work well in other environments. At a beach as isolated as Ocracoke it led to a lot of boring photos of sand once it cleared the part of the beach we had claimed for ourselves for the day.

The next day we got to watch the kids surf, so we went to another part of the beach where the surf was better. Yes, that is an airstrip you can see in this photo. I probably shouldn't have been flying a kite so close to an airport, but it isn't very busy and I didn't go up high for very long.

Back at the condo I decided I really wanted to get a shot of the harbor and the wind was blowing the right direction. So I headed out to the end of the dock, got the kite out, and quickly tangled all the lines. After about 30 minutes with help from my dad and my wife I managed to get the kite in the air and sent the camera up. For some reason once I got the kite up in the air it kept diving to the right, one of the lines still wasn't quite right. I didn't want to drop my kite and camera on someone so I kept it relatively low before pulling it back down. The small isolated house right on the harbor we used to rent can be seen below the water tower in the photo.

As you can see the picavet hung almost level from the kite line. It would be level, but the center of gravity of the camera is not centered below the picavet. This design worked very well, but there is room for improvement. When in flight the camera would swing from side to side a lot. The lines for the picavet may have been too long, or attached to the kite string too close together.

Many of the photos were blurry once I saw them on the computer screen. Next time I'll be setting the camera to use a faster shutter speed and perhaps look into how to reduce vibration in the kite line. I also did all of my KAP flights during some of the worst lighting conditions of the day. I wasn't really thinking about lighting, but more about flying a kite when I felt like flying a kite. Next time I'll be trying to do more flights in the early morning and evening when the lighting is more interesting.

Overall attempting Kite Aerial Photography was a lot of fun. Having an entertaining project like this while on vacation was a lot of fun for a change. I should have bought a higher quality kite online before going on vacation, but half the fun was having an excuse to go back to the kite shop each day.