Aerial panorama of San Francisco and the Bay Bridge

Captive Airship

Aerial photography of the San Francisco Bay Area and California coast — from kites to drones.

A long line in the sky

In 1906, George R. Lawrence sent a camera aloft on a train of kites to photograph San Francisco one month after the earthquake. He called the resulting panorama the work of a "Captive Airship."

More than a century later, I picked up that thread — first sending cameras up on kite lines over the same city, then graduating to drones as the technology evolved. The perspective changed. The fascination with seeing the world from above didn't.

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Kite aerial photograph of San Francisco

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