Beschreibung / Hintergrund:
(links) Batuts Drachen, und (oben Mitte) seine Photographie vonLabrugiere
(rechts) Lawrences Drachen, und (unten Mitte) eines seiner Panoramen von San Franzisco nach dem Erdbeben und den Bränden
The English meteorologist E. D. Archibald was among the first to take successful photographs from kites in 1882. He used a string of kites, with the camera being attached to the last.
In France, Arthur Batut took an aerial photographs from a kite in 1889, in Labruguiere, France. He suspended his still rather large camera from a single kite, and set an automatically timed exposure. A slow burning fuse, responding to a rubber band driven device, triggered the shutter within a few moments of the kite being launched. Batut's first aerial photograph was taken in May 1888.
In California, the devastation of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire was captured by George R. Lawrence, using a camera attached to a string of kites high above the city. His specially designed large-format camera had a curved film plate to provide panoramic images, which remain some of the largest aerial exposures ever taken. The camera, which was large and extremely heavy, took as many as 17 kites to lift it 2,000 feet into the air. Lawrence also used ladders and high towers to capture lower level "aerial" photographs. |