DIY Aerial Photography and Edgar Allan Poe
Earlier this year Professor Megan Marlatt from the University of Virginia McIntire Department of Art began work with her students to create a jumbo outdoor mural titled “Hello Pluto, Good-bye Kitty” based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Black Cat”. The mural design covered a large suburban parking lot.
From street level, viewers see small cats painted on the parking lot.
But when we gain the larger view by lofting a camera attached to a helium balloon several hundred feet into the air we get our first views of the entire work in progress.
“‘Hello Pluto, Good-bye Kitty” was off to a fine start but much work was still to be done.
When Professor Marlatt and her students completed their work a few weeks later we returned with our aerial photography rig to document the finished product.
“Hello Pluto, Good-bye Kitty”
This project illustrates some of the benefits of do it yourself aerial photography. With a small investment of equipment and time we collected high resolution imagery to document change over time for a discrete study area. We see applications for these techniques across many academic disciplines. So we’re working now to fine-tune our approaches while we collaborate with faculty and students.
Contact us in the Scholars’ Lab to chat about how your work can benefit from do it yourself aerial photography.