Waimea (Kamuela) - Kite Aerial

Our Town

Waimea (or Kamuela, as it's known to the US Postal Service) is still a fairly small town toward the north end of the Big Island of Hawai`i. It sits at the foot of Kohala Mountain, visible in this synth.

The synth was made using a camera suspended from a kite line. The kite was being flown in the athletic fields at Waimea Middle School.

The synth was done using a Brooks BBKK KAP rig, which provides pan and tilt control, as well as shutter control over the camera. For this the shutter was actuated using a combination of a really neat device called a GentLED-CHDK, which is a smart cable with an RC servo plug on one side and a USB plug on the other. One end goes into the RC receiver, the other goes into the camera's USB port. When used on a camera running CHDK (Canon compact cameras only), it's possible to trigger the shutter electronically. The camera was set to continuous shutter mode, the rig was set to spinning, and the shutter was actuated. The result was three panoramas and this synth.