Wooded Village

[Redrobes]

Oh yeah baby ! I have heard about this when reading on Debevecs web site (http://www.debevec.org/Campanile/) - go there, thats one COOOL site - where the guy took some shots for the campanile movie.

I have thought about it but I haven't flown a kite since a time just after I got to grips with this crawling / walking thing. I always thought it might be a fun way to trash a few digicams. But they are getting a lot cheaper recently where a 2+ MPix is about £20 ($40 or so) - prob less if you could keep getting second hand ones. The remote shutter would be no problem. Its the kite I worry about.

[GlennZilla]

Well most of them use the really big kites and give them a test flight or two with a matching weight that isn't a fragile camera. Most of the rigs I see are cheap disposable camera with a radio controlled remote or a timer.

I think the hard part would be getting a village to allow a stranger to fly a kite bearing electronics over thier rooftops.

Maybe I'm just still miffed at Boston for 1-31-07.

[Redrobes]

I'd do it for just trees I think. Thatched cottages are uncommon enough that it would be a great feat to get several via a kite. Trees though should be a little easier ! Your right that there is probably a law against it somehow. I suspect that there would be a law against breathing next to a wood. The UK seems to be slightly less fidgety than Boston I will agree but it has that same oppressive attitude to anything remotely unusual. Y'know there is a kite festival each year in the park not so far from here. They have some monster kites - power winch stuff 'n all - so maybe ill go there this year and have a chat to a few guys. I have been asking about people who fly balloons but I hadn't thought of contacting people who might have cameras mounted on kites. There must be some legit way to get a stack of tree photos. Dirty big rocket is what I need !

[pyrandon]

...Dirty big rocket is what I need !

Or a bottle of Wonka's Fizzy Lifting Drink!

[su_liam]

@Redrobes: Yeah, if they object to your big kite, whip out your 30-foot long LOX/gasoline rocket. That'll shut the whiners up.

@Pyrandon: If I'm going to risk my life actually flying up there, I'll take me a nice DSLR with big fat telephoto lens. OH YEAH!

If only I had $10,000.00 or so to spare...

[GlennZilla]

I thought about this a bit last night and called up a firend who flys R/C airplanes. He claims that I could mount a disposable camera under his plane and take photos by remote control.

He says that he's got to finish the large "parkflyer jet" he's been working on for a year now to carry the extra weight. If he gets it finished, I'll get us some photos yet.

(EDIT)

I am going to call my old boss that Oklahoma Water Resources Board. They used to take aerial photos of lakes and rivers. Maybe he's got some photos of the various trees in the state. They vary from scrub oaks only a few feet tall in the west and 70 ft pines in the east. Since you are after trees, I think I can manage to help out.

[Redrobes]

WOW

If you can get either of these options going that would be immensely useful and I and many others would be indebted. Its the permission to use and publish thats the key. If you take them yourself then thats not an issue but using stuff which other people think you should have to license or get permission is where the killer bit is because usually it takes special equipment like planes & balloons etc and, not surprisingly, they usually want a fee. Its the burden of retrospectively withdrawing permission that means that I wont use stuff unless it has a stated license term or a declaration on public domain. The majority of downloads from my site are creative commons which is a license that guarantees it stays free and sharable. Public domain is ideal but items declared as such have a strange habit of becoming not public domain any more.