This is another one of those things that gets much better and cheaper with a digital camera. This poor guy only got one shot per launch and had to carefully time it so the kite would be at the right hight for the camera to be focused.

Even Google Earth is getting in on the act now.

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KITE TAKES AERIAL PHOTOS

You don’t have to hire a plane and pilot to get good air shots of ground objects.

By E. J. Roy

FOR many years, the idea of making photographs from a kite has been in my mind. This year, I decided to do something about it. First was the kite design, and having had considerable experience with various types of kites, I finally selected a design for a triangular box kite with wings. Read the rest of this entry »

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PLANE TALK

Edited by MAJOR H. H. ARNOLD

Major Arnold, who conducts this monthly department, discusses aviation from a background of more than twenty years’ experience. This month he takes up some of the most recent developments in the conquest of the air and describes the methods used in marking the aerial highways.
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Flying Cameraman Ousts the Old-Time Prospector

Where prospectors of the old school searched the gold country for years in quest of the precious metal, the modern aerial cameraman discovers and records all the salient features of a mineral-bearing region by the simple click of a shutter. Read here how the amazing instruments disclose topographical secrets to flying prospectors.
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Pigeons Now Take Aerial Photos
AN automatic miniature camera strapped to the breast of a carrier pigeon is the latest method being employed for the making of aerial photographs in Germany. The camera is timed so that shutter is snapped at regular intervals in bird’s flight.

Anybody want to find the current equivalent photos? I’m guessing that almost all of these buildings will be obscured. Plus I think Manhattan is a little bigger now.

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GOTHAM’S CANYONS Up-To-Date

Remarkable Aerial Photos of Manhattan’s Ever – Changing Skyline.
Photos by Ewing Galloway

Mountains of Brick and Glass! That is what O. Henry might have called these man-made skyscrapers. Here is an air shot looking directly down Fifth Avenue. New buildings are pointed out.

Here’s how the famous Battery looks to an airman. The new financial district, the winding 6th Avenue Elevated line and the Staten Island ferry piers can be seen. A symphony in architecture!
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He Made Sky Mapping a Big Business

High above the broken floor of the Rio Grande River basin, an airplane growls monotonously over 32,000 square miles, each click of its Cyclopean camera bringing nearer to completion the largest photographic mapping project ever undertaken in the United States.

EXACTING and tedious is the scientific job of gathering up 32,000 square miles and literally pasting them in your hat. Only one man is utterly capable and he is the fellow who supervises the shooting and assembling of this vast mosaic.
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200-Mile Air Camera
ALONG distance aerial camera perfected by Captain A. W. Stevens of the U. S. Army Air Service has proved itself capable of taking photographs from a distance of 200 miles. The secret of the amazing performance of the camera lies in the fact that it is equipped with a dense red filter that cuts through the haze which usually clouds long distance pictures. The above photo of New York shows how the smoke which always hangs over a large city is pierced.

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Flying Cameras Map America for War

By ANDREW R. BOONE

FROM aerial photographs snapped by giant bombers soaring four miles above the earth, U. S. Army engineers are compiling maps that will serve as eyes for our armed forces if they ever have to wage a defensive war on American soil.

Flying out of Fort Lewis, Wash., the camera planes have recently been engaged in photographing all unmapped areas between the Cascade Mountains and the Pacific, from Puget Sound to the Siskiyou Mountains of California. With their multiple cameras they make five pictures at a crack, one straight down and four at angles ahead, astern, and to the sides. Finished prints of the photographs are sent to the 29th Engineers at Portland, Ore. Here, in two old school buildings, they are turned into topographical maps showing all important features that would figure in wartime plans. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve seen these pigeons before. This article also has examples of the pictures they took.

Carrier Pigeons Turn Cameramen

SOMETHING entirely new in aerial photography has been developed in Munich, Germany. In place of trained photographers carried aloft in airplanes or observation balloons, camera equipped pigeons are released to fly over the object to be photographed.

The pigeons do not fly at random. Months of training and selection are required before a few birds are chosen for camera work. Then their flights in each direction are timed so that the trainer knows exactly at what time the bird will be over a certain point. It is then a simple matter to time the camera to expose the film at the point desired.
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KITE + BALLOON=KYTOON

ON CALM DAYS, kite enthusiast Domina Jalbert felt frustrated. Although he had kites of all types, he simply couldn’t make one fly when there wasn’t any breeze.

This frustration led to the Kytoon, a hybrid sky rider that combines the best features of the kite with the best of the balloon. Even the name, Kytoon, is a combination of kite and balloon. Read the rest of this entry »