The weather has not cooperated with my schedule to do much KAP lately. Today, the forecast was overcast with a chance of rain all day, but there was finally some wind in a direction suitable for taking aerial photos of the Point Lookout Lighthouse, so I decided to head over there and see what would happen. Overcast can be good, because it avoids the harsh highlights and shadows of bright daylight and can also produce dramatic-looking clouds sometimes.
I was planning to go in the morning and fly by myself like I normally do, but this time my daughter wanted to come along, so we made a little trip of it. She really enjoyed playing on the rocks and at the beach and watching the kite fly.
Playing on the rocks at Point Lookout, MD 
The beach at Point Lookout, MD
When we got to the location, it was quite overcast but with no sign of rain. Since it wasn’t very bright out, I pushed the shutter speed all the way down to 1/800 sec, which is longer than I’ve done before. From experience, the Sony RX0 images start to get noticeably noisy above ISO 400, so I was trying to avoid that. I figured that even if more images than normal had some motion blur, at least the sharp ones would have good image quality. This strategy worked out well, as all my images came out below ISO 400, and plenty of them were sharp.
There was plenty of wind, definitely in the Beaufort 4 range. This would have been plenty to fly the Mini Dopero kite, but I still chose to fly the Rokker instead. It is the most stable one I have, and that stability would be needed for the longer shutter speeds. I adjusted the tow point to its forwardmost mark on the line, which helps keep the aerodynamic forces manageable in stronger winds while still maintaining adequate stability. Once the kite was up in the air, it was moving around quite a lot, so I decided to bring it down again and attach a drogue. That did a good job of stabilizing it, so I attached the rig and started the timer to automatically take pictures.
This time, the plan was not to fly very high, since the lighthouse is not large, and I wanted it to be the main subject. We started on the northeast side of the lighthouse. My original plan was to fly the camera to the south and get the end of the peninsula in view looking towards the north. The wind direction ended up being more east than north, which would not have allowed the kite to fly offshore to the south and capture the view I had in mind, so I changed the plan and flew to the north instead. We walked around to a few different spots, hoping to create plenty of options to choose a good composition when I got the pictures back. The best one ended up being one of the last ones taken, which is shown at the top of this page and first in the gallery above. The kite and camera were flying off the west side of the peninsula here, looking back towards the southeast towards the lighthouse and the end of the peninsula. In addition to the main subject, I also really like the dramatic overcast sky and the posts in the water in this shot. The gallery also includes one of the first pictures I took, from the east side of the peninsula, and one more in the middle.
I hope you enjoyed reading about my latest KAP adventure. If so, consider giving it a like, subscribing, or sharing this page with a friend. Thanks!
Southern Maryland Kite Aerial Photography 