Photographer uses kites to take aerial photographs

LAKE LINDEN — Look up at the sky.  It’s a bird!  It’s a plane!  Nope–it’s just a camera attached to a kite that gives Nathan Miller great pictures of the Keweenaw Peninsula.

Miller said he started doing aerial photography fairly recently and it became a passion for him ever since.

So what does it take to be an aerial photographer?

“Definitely the risk is the biggest factor. Otherwise, it’s just another hobby that you kind of got to push your way through, put on a brave face and do a lot of research,” Miller said.

The setup does take some time and windy conditions don’t make it easy, but when the kite is put in motion, the only thing left is to hook up the camera, which is placed on a rig that Miller designed himself.

“It’s got a little Servo that’s controlled by a chip and that controls the whole rig so it will spin 360 degrees around about every minute or so,” Miller said.

Miller takes pictures like these and puts them on his Facebook page which has gotten really popular lately.  He said even he has been surprised at how fast word got around about his photos.

“It’s really hard to get a big following on that,” he said.  “So slowly but surely, other people started to discover that and it was shared more broadly and now people from all across the Keweenaw and the Upper Peninsula are seeing that. And so that’s been driving me as to putting out these good photos for people to see.”

So if you ever wanted to get a bird’s eye view of your neighborhood, get a hold of this guy and he’ll get you some breathtaking shots.

To view some of Miller’s photos, visit his Facebook page by clicking here.