And now to your question: “Why don’t you just get yourselves a drone?”

Kites are pretty much unsteerable and at a complete mercy of the winds. They hate the turbulence (that is prevalent near the ground and messes with the kite until you get it higher into the smoother wind) and the dreadful kite-eating trees are preying upon them. So really — why don’t we get adrone for aerial photography? Those little tecnology marvels turn you instantly into an aerial cinematographer, shooting spectacular 4k videos from the air, assisted by GPS and 3 axis gimbals and auto-tracking and autonomous flying and obstacle avoidance and whatnot.

Well, the first answer is because it is so much fun. Just looking at the kites climb is fascinating, meditative, soothing. Listening to the wind, trying to harness its power, is so delicate and harmonious. And the rush when the kite lands and you flip through the pictures on the camera screen — What did we get? What did we get? — is reminiscing of the old times when you had to wait for the film to develop. It’s nostalgic, and beautiful, and exciting, and … yes, fun.