Kite photography in a nutshell consists of launching a kite and getting it flying, attaching a camera by some means to the kite line and then letting out more line so the kite and the camera gain some height. Methods of aiming and triggering the camera vary quite a bit from dirt simple to quite complex.
On the simple end, people have crude rubber band and lever contraptions to push the button after some measurable delay on a simple disposable camera. That sort of rig is then hung from the kite line and sent up long enough for the rubber bands to unwind and push the shutter button. Then it gets hauled down, reset and sent up again to snap another single shot.
On the complex end, rigs include live video down links so the operator can see exactly what the camera sees and can has full remote control over pan and tilt as well as camera settings such as zoom and exposure times.
We use a rig that falls somewhere in the middle. It uses a remote radio transmitter that control over three things; pan, tilt and shutter release. So from the ground we pan the camera a full 360°, we can tilt anywhere from the horizon to straight down and we can trigger the shutter button at will.
What we don't have is any kind of video down link meaning we have no way of seeing what exactly is in the picture. We don't have it and we honestly don't want it. Not being able to see exactly what the pictures look like while you're shooting them adds an element of random chance that really makes it appealing to us. We put the rig in the air, we point the camera what we think will be interesting, take a bunch of shots and then we get what we get.
That means we end up with hundreds of photos that look like this one:
But we also get photos like this one:
Its really hit or miss. But its also really rewarding.
This would be a good place to add a photo of our current camera rig. And it I had one, I'd put it here. Here's a shot of a rig that is very similar to what we use.
