Notes on Kite Aerial Photography: Photo Gallery

Lustgarten, Museum Island
Berlin, Germany


Images from a KAP excursion to Museum Island, the ancient center of Berlin, were lost to poor developing in Paris. The aerial image on the right, one of a few to survive, shows a portion of the Berliner Dom (a gaudy 20th century neobaroque concoction with a nice organ) and a socialist office block that stands on the site of the old royal palace (Canon 24-mm, July 2000)


A sad tale this. My first aerial photographs in Europe were taken at the Lustgarten, a nice green on Berlin's Museum Island. There I flew the Rokkaku in challenging (read low) wind conditions and managed to take a roll of film. That roll of Ektachrome traveled to Paris undeveloped and was then submitted to a photolab for E6 processing. Something went badly awry and the slides were ruined. In over 500 rolls of kite lofted photos this is the first roll lost to poor processing. 

The Alte Museum (Old Museum) by Karl Friedrich Schinkel built to house artworks returned to Germany after Napoleon's reign. (Canon 24-mm, July 2000)

The Alte Museum was constructed in 1822 (over a grave site). The 256-foot-long Lustgarten side opens along its full width into a hall with 18 Ionic columns  An enormous stone bowl sits in front of the building’s steps. Made of Swedish granite, this bowl was the created by Christian Gottlieb Cantian in 1828. I am told that the The granite was taken from one of the Margrave stones, a group of boulders that were transported by ice to the Rauen Hills near Berlin, south of the Fürstenwalde/Spree rivers, approximately 300,000 years ago.


The Swedish granite bowl in front of the Alte Museum. Note the two seated people for scale. (Canon 24-mm, July 2000)



While I was on the Lustgarten photographing the Berliner Dom I became interested in the large stone bowl. At one point a young father lifted his daughter up into the bowl and handed her a small bicycle. She rode happily around and around for a half-hour or so. My photographs of the bowl came later and a few of these were clear enough to scan. The ground textures surrounding the bowl had that wonderful clarity of expression I came to expect of the Berlin infrastructure -- and no doubt made the smooth texture of the bowl all the more appealing to our young cyclist.

Close views of the large bowl (Canon 24-mm, July 2000)



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