Kite Aerial Photography and Grass Roots Mapping
| 2010 News |
Anyone who has ever flown a kite knows that the experience is fairly exhilarating, especially when the conditions allow for attaining high kite-flying altitudes; however, once you hit the end of your string – what do you do? Unless you have a two-stringed stunt kite, your options are fairly limited. Assuming the winds are fairly consistent, and you have only one string on your kite, your kite-flying experience quickly hits a dead end, and your options are: a) watch the kite fly, b) reel it in and launch it again, or c) launch another. If you have children assisting you, they will be wowed for a short period, and then their attention will probably be drawn towards more constructive endeavors like building a sandcastle. So, how do kite enthusiasts maintain their enthusiasm in mid-flight? Rig a camera to the kite, and Voila! You now have two hobbies in one.
Kite Aerial Photography (KAP) is a hobby that has been taken on primarily by a subset of kite-flying enthusiasts in an effort to help fill in the time during mid-flight by utilizing the kite’s altitude for an inexpensive methodology to provide a new perspective on the pilot’s surroundings. One of the most comprehensive examples of such work can be seen on Dr. Charles Benton's website from the University of California, Berkeley.
This adaptation is not a new development though, as aerial photography has been utilizing hot air balloons since 1858, when the French photographer and balloonist Gaspard-Félix Tournachon flew over Paris with a camera in hand.
Now, with the recent advent of Google Maps, Bing Maps, and now the more wiki-minded OpenStreetMap and Wikimapia, KAP has now made a nexus to allow KAP enthusiasts to mosaic, georeference, and submit their KAP to the aerial imagery “cloud” (excuse the pun).
In Frank Taylor's blog, Tahina Expedition he outlines how he was able to take some KAP of "BBQ Island," as it is called by some of the locals, and have the KAP mosaiced and incorporated into Google Maps. This island, as a part of the San Blas archipelago off the coast of Panama, only had VERY low resolution Satellite Imagery. As a result, Google Maps now has an updated aerial view of this island, with fairly high resolution. Of course, as photogrammetrists, we know that an island is perhaps amongst the greatest places for such mosaicing to occur, since there is virtually no requirement to edge-match to anything - except for perhaps the visible sea floor.
This effort has also led to Grassroots Mapping initiatives
Other examples of the KAP and Google Earth nexus include:
http://www.tahinaexpedition.com/2010/01/advanced-look-at-kite-aerial-imagery-of-petite-tabac.html
http://grassrootsmapping.org/2010/07/largest-balloon-map-so-far-in-mestia-georgia/
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