Wisconsin Public Television University Place  A Kite's View of Wisconsin  Craig Wilson  6/18/13 UP887  cc >> Today we are pleased to introduce and host photographer and author Craig Wilson as part of the Wisconsin Historical Museum's History Sandwiched In lecture series as he shares his personal knowledge of Wisconsin sites from a whole new angle. The opinions expressed today are those of the presenter and are not necessarily those of the Wisconsin Historical Society, nor the museum's employees. Please join me in welcoming Craig to the stage as he showcases Wisconsin from an unusual viewpoint, a camera suspended from a kite. [applause]  >> Thank you, Alex, and thanks to the museum. Thanks to all of you for joining us today as I attempt to take you on a little journey in the air above Madison and Wisconsin sites that I think you'll find familiar, but now you're going to view them perhaps in a little different way. I'd also like to thank the museum for bringing me here and to promote my new book, A Little More Line. It's a follow-up to my first book which was called Hanging By A Thread. That was a kite's view of Wisconsin. A little more line will take you around Wisconsin, but a little further, out into adjoining states, locations like Chicago, Galena, Dubuque, Des Moines, Duluth, the UP and sites just slightly beyond the Wisconsin boarder. We'll move right into what I do. 

I use a kite to lift a remote controlled camera. It's equipment that I pretty much build all in my basement and in my garage, you know, with pieces and parts that are found that most often have some other intended purpose when they were produced, a little roller from a screen door perhaps, a timer that was maybe meant to be used on a radio controlled airplane, little motors and servos that come from other hobbies. I have been able to connect them together to create a system that allows me to use a kite such as the one you see here to lift my camera gear. You can see that the camera is here, and it's held in a little cradle, I call it. That's actually attached to the kite line. I don't know if you can follow-- You can't see the kite in this picture, but here's sort of the bottom of the system for the time being. The kite is up flying now and I've connected the camera gear now ready to let more line out and let the camera be carried aloft by the kite. I do this rather than use an airplane or some other mode because it allows me to get the camera into rather usual locations and vantage points. It's something that I really relish, the ability to take my camera to places that you sort of think only a bird or a bug would be able to go.  Here we're right behind another kite, which is certainly not a vantage point that you could get from any other way. 

Now you might wonder, how did you get started in such an odd endeavor? This is a photo of my father in a homemade glider. It's called a primary glider. This photo was taken in, I think, about 1972 down at the Stoughton airport which is, still to this day, just a grass strip. After my father had completed building this in the garage he would have one of his children, and it was usually, I remember, it was often me, that would drive our family Oldsmobile down the runway at about 45 miles an hour towing a 600 foot, basically a ski rope, with my father on the end of it. [laughter] When I think back and look back on those experiences today, and I didn't sort of make this connection at the time. It was just sort of something I did with my dad at the time. But now I think back and I think, you know that's really kite flying. You have an aircraft on a tether. That's basically the very definition of a kite. So I think back at my earliest real kite flying, with the exception of those little paper kites that we flew as real children, this is sort of where I think it started for me. 

Some years later I really found that I was into building my own kites. Not to be towed behind the family Oldsmobile, but rather just to fly as you would typically fly a normal kite. It struck me one day as I was flying a new 20 foot wide kite that it was certainly powerful enough to lift the weight of a camera. Over the next six to eight months I tried to figure out how I could take the camera that I had and epoxy a timer to the back of it. This is in the mid-80s. It was before digital cameras, before motorized cameras. After each frame you'd have to wind the film to the next frame. You know, so the camera would have to come back down, and I would advance the film to the next frame and let it all back up, and the times would go off. This image is from that first roll of film. This is my backyard. 

This is the house that I was living in at the time. You can see that it's really not a very good picture. [laughter] It's crocked. We're not seeing all of the house. It's kind of over exposed, right,at the white portion of the siding on the house. You could just make a whole list of things that are wrong with this image. Yet when I saw this film back from the lab a few days later I was just struck and fascinated, and now motivated to do it better. Because I thought the vantage point was just fantastic. This is a place in space that no other creature, well, no other human certainly, had ever been. I wanted to pursue that idea. 

I thought this was really an appealing vantage point, even though the image was very flawed. So over the next few years I was able to improve my equipment and improve my techniques, and sort of teach myself how to really do this. Mind you, the camera is separated from me. I'm no longer looking through it as a typical photographer would. It is hanging up there, sometimes several hundred feet, in the air. I'm just now remotely controlling the camera as to where I think it's looking, and tripping the shutter. But I found that-- This is basically the first roll of film with my new and improved system. Already I had made huge leaps and bounds forward in the techniques in the quality of the image. And actually, from this first roll of film of Camp Randall, this is the student section at one for the Badger games. Of course, this is pre-heightened security days. 

[laughter] I was able to get, I think, six or seven shots from that single roll of film published in various things including postcards and covers and other promotional material. I was sort of off and running now that I had found an actual sort of end use for the images I was generating. I had it sort of legitimized by the media, that they were actually using and paying me for use of some of the images I was generating. That sort of set me on the path to always having a list in front of me of locations that I thought would be interesting to photograph from the kite's view. This is the top of the statue on top of the Capitol building, called Wisconsin. This has been used by a number of publications, some of which are even in this room today, and been hung on a lot of walls as artwork. That, again, really kept me motivated to go forward. One of the things that I'm always looking for are shapes and shadows, and again, fresh ways to see very familiar things. This is probably one of the most loved and familiar locations in Madison. It's the Union terrace. 

This is certainly a different look of that site. >> You must have to kind of predict the lighting and the timing of the shadows. Because you can see it. Do you just have to-- >> Yeah, so the question is how do I predict all of the lighting and the shadows and the timing. It's done through, really, studying the site ahead of time. And thinking about, you know, when do I want to be at a location to capture an image because I maybe want to make use of shadows. Of course, in the summer like today, when we go outside after this, you're shadow is going to be about as short as it ever is during the year because the sun is most directly overhead right now. If I want shadows like in this image, this is a fall shot, late in the day, probably five o'clock. You know, I have all those things in my head, because, like you say, I need to sort of visualize and image what the camera is going to be seeing. Summer for me is not the only time to fly kites. 

I fly kites year round. In some cases, as is in this shot out on the lake ice with ice boating, I actually embrace the winter. Until, maybe, the end of February. [laughter] Then I'm ready to move on. But I like the idea of winter and the seasons. Photographically the seasons make it quite interesting as a photographer, to capture differing light and different situations. But beyond that, the ice also, to me, I see it as a big open kite field. It's nearly impossible, not impossible, but quite challenging, to fly the kite out of a boat if I want to make a shot of a shoreline or something. Whereas in the winter I can just walk out there. With no tree, no power lines, kite flying on lake ice really couldn't be any easier. 

One of the things that I also really appreciate about the vantage point that the kite gives is just how it can turn some of these ordinary views and ordinary subjects into really abstract art, I think. This is an ice boater, casting a shadow, going across the surface of Lake Monona, but to me, when you look at it, you kind of think Star Wars. [laughter]  This is an example of flying a kite out of a boat on liquid water chasing other sailors around. I have developed a nice little rapport with sailors and other people that use the wind in the course of their hobbies and interests. We have a kindred spirit. And I also like to put myself in images. Partly because I'm one of the only models out at the site. [laughter] But also, it's sort of a record of, I was here. I sort of like that. That was one of the original things that got me interested in lifting the camera with my kite, was the ability to do aerial photography with my kids nearby, out of the truck of my car, or, literally, out of the backpack on my back. 

Going to places like beaches and parks and travel destinations, and being able to make an aerial photo of the site, and have myself in it or my family in it. It was kind of one of the things that got me intrigued into it. And still to this day, I like to use myself in the images when possible. Sometimes to give a sense of scale, and sometimes, again, like in this case, it becomes a work of abstract art. It makes you kind of wonder, what is happening here? I call this one The Giant Leap. It's sort of like a leap through space. Human activity is something that I'm always drawn to with using the kite to make aerial photos. Most of the aerial photos that you see are shot from an airplane or helicopter, or even satellites. Probably many of you today, when you were figuring out this location-- Maybe not many, but some of you maybe, accessed Google Earth or did MapQuest, or utilized in some way an aerial photo to wayfind your way to this location. I personally probably go on Google Earth at least once a day, if not multiple times a day, scouting locations that I might be interested in, or finding my way to somewhere. 

But from those kind of altitudes we often lose the scale of the human on the surface. In traditional aerial photos you don't often see people in them. About the smallest thing you see in them is maybe like a car, or house-sized. Often aerial photos are those grand vista views of an entire city or a mountain range, or a huge tract of farm land. The world sort of stretches out before you. I like the idea of using a kite and keeping the camera relatively low to the ground for that, I'll call it, an aerial close-up, rather than that huge group shot that you'd get traditionally with traditional methods. For me, I'm always drawn to events where people are doing something. Or in this case, people have done something. I shot this last winter out on Lake Wingra. This is the result of just people playing, ice skating, cross country skiing, fishing, walking. 

I see dog tracks. It's kind of a whole bunch of stuff going on out here to create a real confused view of some kind of human activity that is quite questionable. This human activity, if you're from Wisconsin, I think is pretty familiar. If you look at the small circles, you'll see it's an amber colored liquid. [laughter] This would be a pretty common activity, particularly at this location on campus.  Opera in the Park is another opportunity for me to take advantage of human beings coming together kind of randomly, but yet there's a sort of a rhyme or reason to the placement of their blankets. There's probably some anthropologists or some science that could study images like this and make sense of how people decide where to put that blanket, and exactly the spacing that they maintain to be proper from their neighbor. I find it quite fascinating how people just sort of randomly distribute themselves on a field before a stage. Here many of these people also are holding their bicycle as they listen to Lance Armstrong give a little opening remarks before a bicycle rally. That's right on the Capitol Square here on the top of East Washington Avenue. 

Here again, another real mosaic, a real quilting of humanity at Opera in the Park. I mentioned too that I'm into shadows. So I'm often drawn to make an image at a time when the shadows will be a big element in the image. Of course, either you're talking morning or evening. But often in the winter, with the low sun, nice shadows are cast. But I just always appreciate being able to have the shadow be the more potent element in the image than the thing casting the shadow. I think it often tells us things that we maybe didn't expect to learn.  In this case, we didn't expect to see a man walking a buffalo on the beach. [laughter]  This is out at Aztalan, east of Madison. And again, I'm trying to use the shadows to help accentuate the mound system there. 

 This was just a few weeks ago at the Race for the Cure. Again, I just really find it fun to play with the light and play with the shadows. I'm also often looking for color. I don't often shoot black and white. In fact, I could probably count the times I purposefully shoot in black and white on one hand. I like the color of the world. And because the camera is relatively close yet to the surface, the colors are vibrant. I like to really take advantage of that. These are cranberries at the cranberry harvest being corralled after-- They float them off of the plants and then they sort of corral them. Then they stick a conveyer belt into this and get them into the truck that way. 

But this kind of looks like it could be a-- I actually call this Red Planet. It sort of looks like a close-up of a red planet with some sort of solar wind blowing against it or something. Again, trying to make use of color. This is a quarry, a lake in a quarry west of Madison, called Lake Katherine.  Here's some ancient pilings in a state park up in the UP where a dock once was constructed to load iron ore.  This is Taliesin out in Spring Green. So I also tend to use this for kind of low angles on architecture. You know, I thought Taliesin was a great use of that sort of green way of aerial photography, using the wind power. It's kind of in the spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright to do things within the environment. It sort of captured this low angle of the house sitting on the nob and nestled into the trees. 

 This is down in Prairie du Chien. This is Villa Louie on the Mississippi shoreline. I talked my wife into helping me out on this. And this meant leaving the house at about five o'clock one morning, hoping that the conditions would be good when we arrived down in Prairie du Chien. They were. There was still a fog hanging over the river. It turned out to get this real painterly view of that. This is back to the Capitol Square here. Again, you know, being able to use the kite and put the camera into a location that you really just can't get really any other way. Or if you did, for instance like this shot, if you were to shoot this out of a helicopter, it'd probably be the last time that that pilot would have the opportunity to shoot that. 

I'm pretty sure that there would be people pretty excited about anyone flying that low over the Capitol. Now I do get permission and get permits when I need to get the kite in over. But the folks there are pretty helpful in providing me access. Because, after all, it's just a kite. [laughter]  Again, I like to capture this unique view. This is the Warner Domes in Milwaukee.  Again, our Capitol building.  And Monona Terrace from an evening view. There's always the next challenge for me. This is one of those examples of being out on the shoreline on the ice, rather than in the water. 

The ice isn't moving up and down with the wind so I can get a more stable platform for my camera as it's being held up. I'm not bobbing in a boat over some waves. The ice is a benefit there, in addition to giving me a good, solid place to stand. But doing it now as the sun is setting and as it goes dark, this time of year it gets dark pretty fast, so by the time I was packing up my gear and walking off the ice it was pretty much pitch dark. There's always the next challenge. Now, I'm not the first guy to do this, using a kite to lift my camera. This was done about 130 years ago. The earliest aerial photo at all was done from hot air balloons in the 1850's. At that time, using a hot air balloon, or even owning a hot air balloon, was really a rich man's game. It was probably akin to one of us owning a private jet. 

I mean it was a pretty high-tech piece of equipment. You needed a crew to help handle it. You'd need trailers and horses to lug things like that around. So it was not something the average person was going to own and operate. Using them was still very rare at that time, but yet, we wanted to see a camera's view of the Earth. While I was waiting to go on today I was enjoying the map collection out in the museum. It really made a connection there. If you look at those maps, and some of these maps just out in the room out here date back into the 1700's, 1800's. When you look at familiar things today was they were mapped several hundred years ago, you can see glaring errors in them. You can imagine that people at that time literally had their lives depending on those maps to wayfind from Europe, or their way up the Great Lakes. 

You get lost in the 1700's you might be literally up a creek. You might have a paddle but not know where you are. Maps were hugely important, I think, throughout time, and now that we're getting into the 1800's, 1900's, there's a real effort being made by lots of folks to get more accurate maps and find ways to actually make photographs to help make those maps even more accurate. Along comes a fellow named Arthur Batut. He was a Frenchman in the 1800's. He decided, well, I don't have enough money to use a hot air balloon to lift my camera, but I can build a big kite. He did. He's, to this day, credited with being the first person to do kite aerial photography. And of course, when I got started in doing this, I had been flying kites for probably about ten years before I connected my camera. I knew about some of these fellows. 

But I didn't know about a fellow named George Lawrence who had taken the image you see before you here. If you look carefully you'll see that this is, in fact, Madison. He made this image in 1908. He was hired by a group in Madison called the 40,000 Club. They were a group, sort of a predecessor to our convention and visitors bureau, sort of a downtown businessmen's club. They wanted to grow Madison to have a permanent population of 40,000, and thereby Madison would be accredited as a first class city. There would probably be some business advantage for the movers and shakers of Madison if they could have that many more people living here, and have the big, red dot on the maps that would show Madison as this first class city. They hired George Lawrence who had just a few years earlier made a very famous photograph of San Francisco following the San Francisco earthquake. That photograph was made with the same camera that he used here. It was a panoramic of San Francisco that was reported to have earned George Lawrence about $20,000, which in 1906 was a lot of money. 

He sets up business, well, he already had a business in Chicago. Now he grows his business and decides that he's going to really cater to cities all throughout, and businesses and corporations around the, particularly, in the Midwest, and be able to make aerial photos for them through this new, ingenious system that he created. It was quite a system, of about 65 pounds of camera gear being lifted by between 10 and 15 van-sized kites up to, sometime with the top kite being flown in train, it's called. You put up a kite, maybe let it go up a 100 feet. Attach another kite to that same line, let it go up, until you have maybe 15 or 20 kites that then have the combined pull to lift 65 pounds of camera gear. With now the top kite at, maybe, 5,000 feet and the camera well below at, maybe, a thousand feet to make the image that you see. This image does reside in the historical archives here. It was taken with this huge swing-lens camera that captured a negative that was about 20 inches by 48 inches. The contact print from that image, 48 inches by 20 inches, the contact print is just a spectacularly detailed image that is just fabulous. He makes this image, being hired by the 40,000 Club, in 1908. 

You can just sort of imagine, as he comes out of his little portable darkroom with this image. His eyes are the first eyes now to see Madison from the air. Before that the highest building would have been the highest vantage point anyone would've seen Madison from. Let's think about it. The Wright brothers flew in 1903. Those first flights were, maybe, several hundred feet long, and maybe 50 feet above the ground in Kitty Hawk. In 1908 it would still years before airplanes would fly over the Midwest and Madison. Certainly, nobody probably living in Madison at that time would have even seen an airplane, much less ridden in one. A pretty spectacular experience, I think, to develop those first images of Madison, and then be able to unroll this image in front of the folks that hired him to shoot Madison and deliver on his promise to being able to, in one image, show the entire city. You can imagine their reaction as they look and locate their own houses, where their kids go to school. 

Oh, this is the church where we go. This is how I walk to get to where I work. It's all in one image. I think it must have just been a tremendous things to see the reaction that people had at that time. Actually, to this day, I still enjoy a bit of that sort of reaction every time I bring my camera down and look through the images and discover what I've found on the computer chip, now, of the camera that I lift. In 2008 I decided to celebrate the 100th anniversary of George Lawrence's image, that I should go out and try to duplicate his views. I did not lift 65 pounds of camera gear. Because now we have an airport nearby, I did not have my top kite at 5,000 feet. I was required to stay-- Let's just say I stayed under FAA rules, and leave it at that. But I was probably not able to get my camera quite as high as George did. 

I also was not quite faithful exactly to his image, because when he took his image the shoreline was-- Oops, where did my mouse curser go? It was basically right along what's now John Nolan Drive. Monona Terrace, of course, wasn't there. These building weren't even there. And in fact, where George was standing to make his image was maybe about right up here which was what used to be called, I think it was, Monona Terrace, before the new Monona Terrace was built. Sort of where Martin Luther King Boulevard ended right there, there was a little park area right next to the Madison Club. I allowed myself to not be totally faithful to duplicate George's view, but to do what I thought he would do if he was to shoot it today. He would have certainly wanted to include what's now certainly part of Madison. So I came out on to the rooftop and made my image. I was standing, actually, right there, as I made this image. My image was done by stitching about 15 images together in Photoshop. 

George Lawrence also made a second image where he set up down where the railroad tracks crisscross. As you go over the causeway and you look to the west or southwest, you'll see two railroad tracks. They make a crossing about half way across the causeway. It's said that he made this second shot from there. After making these shots the afternoon paper, we only had one then. We had the afternoon paper. The headline was Views from Cloudland. I just find that so amusing that it's very sort of Disney-esque word to use. It's clearly so out there to even imagine that you'd be able to take a camera into the air. The only word they could come up with for it was cloudland, Images from Cloudland. 

I, of course, had to duplicate  that one as well. This was my view standing out on the same crossing. I'd like to thank you for coming today. You've been a great audience. I hope, if you've got any questions, we've got a few minutes left here. [applause]