This is a hobby of mine. Kite Aerial Photography (KAP). I started with a Remote Control plane, but had very limited success. With a kite it's much more stable. I've been using a Canon SX 110 IS (and a lesser quality Casio) for a while now, and just purchased a Rebel XS (although I'm afraid to send it up with the kite).
Anyway, these are various photos I took of my town and other areas. I'm not good at post production yet, and that's a problem because one cannot shoot KAP using manual modes (unless very, VERY advanced). I use TV mode so that I can set the shutter extremely high and with IS it can take some good shots. Using TV mode is essential because the camera bounces around up there in the wind, so you have to set the shutter lightning fast and then cross your fingers.
Enjoy, and feel free to edit, critique, etc. Oh, and I use Photobucket, so the quality is so-so. I haven't learned how to post the best way yet either. Any advice for this newbie to photography is appreciated, and I can always give tips for those of you interested in KAP.
This first photo is of my culdesac. It's the pink house with the two cars in the driveway. Most guys edit out the line. I only remove the line from the photo if I think it's necessary. Sometimes you have to shoot with the line in the photo (because of the sun). And sometimes your autofocus will fall on the kite string, which isn't good at all.
Generally, I get about one or two good shots per "roll" when I shoot. I take 500 pictures at a time. It takes about ten minutes.
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I included this picture to show what it's like to KAP. I shoot blind while some use a downlink and remote to trigger the camera. I actually set the camera to continuous and use a velcro strap to hold down the button. It shoots until the card fills up. Ideal card size: 2 gig for my 9 megapix camera.
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A farm near where I live. It needs better processing, of course, but it came out okay. I tweaked it a bit here and there with Photofiltre (free software).
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This one of the neighborhood and river required a lot of crop, rotate, and color enhancing. It's a poor-quality shot, but the scene is good. This was from my Casio (not a very good camera). Most KAPers use a point and shoot. The good ones use DSLR, but they are taking bigger risks, of course. The more weight your camera has (inertia) is actually a good thing (within reason) because it reduces camera shake. The Casio I have is 4 ounces, and bounces in the wind like a feather. This is Knoxville, Tennessee (and the Tennessee River).
The reason I really like this photo (although it needs more PP) is that it luckily fell into the Rule of Thirds. The houses run up theleft vertical line and the road goes up the right vertical line. The river hits the top horizontal line, etc. If I can get it looking good in post production, it might be a decent photo (my opinion). But I figure that if I like something, then maybe others would too. My goal is to kill the cars (they make the photo messy), and also remove the outhouse in the bottom right corner, etc. Plus, the horizon is still tilted. The entire picture was once tilted about 45 degrees.
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This is a picture of my church. Horrible picture and the trees in the top right corner are cut and pasted sloppily, but it worked (to a certain degree). The roof really looks like that (not a copy/paste job).
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A picture of my neighborhood pool complex.
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Tybee Island, Georgia. My rig accidentally faced the wrong way, getting the string in the picture. However, I have a post-production version somewhere in which the string is gone. I forgot where I put it.
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Finally, a picture from my neighborhood. Notice the distorted horizon. That's barrel distortion. This picture was rotated and cropped a little, but not much. It needs more post production.
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There are some KAPers who do some amazing work, and a lot of people like to take vertical shots (camera pointing straight down). Mine are what you can call horizontal (although many KAPers would argue that horizontal is not an accurate term for it, since the camera is rarely actually aimed horizontally. It's almost always aimed about 30 degrees below the horizon in my photos). So they are oblique, you could say.
I'll post more photos when I find them. I rearranged my computers and portable hard drives.
after the 
