Well_today_was much more successful. With a completely rebuilt camera rig, and four balloons instead of two, Luca and I were prepared. This is the setup we were using, it was constructed from bent and twisted aluminum rods, nylon string, and plastic straps. The balloons were attached to a crossbar at the top, and the camera was attached to a lower frame that hung below. These parts were connected by string in a self-stabilizing configuration. Aerial balloon and kite photography have been around for quite some time. In fact it was Pierre Picavet who was the first to devise this stabilizing rig in 1912. The Picavet design is still the standard base for modern rigs. Click for more…
(Click for larger images)
The large balloons juxtapose in interesting ways with the trees, don’t they? It’s been a busy day, we shot over 20GB’s of video. It will take a day or two just to go through it all. The nature of this kind of photography is to shoot lots, and edit it down later. The lighting was perfect today. Our biggest challenge this time was in dealing with the wind, there was a steady breeze all day that made filming in some spots difficult. We just had to wait around for a calm moment and try again.
Off to the next tree…
Near the end of our shoot, we attached my digital camera to the balloons with just a bit of string. I set the intervelometer to capture a photo every minute, not the fastest snap rate. With the camera spinning randomly in the breeze, we were lucky enough to capture ourselves sitting in the grass. Its quite amazing.
Only one way to finish off the day…
…with a little ice cream.
