Luz, Green Cathedral

Luz is born at the Cayman islands, she prefers to share no other personal information, which is fine of course.

We went to an interesting location: the Green Cathedral near Almere. The Green Cathedral is a land-art project: art which is part of a landscape, instead of art that is aimed to be located indoors or in a garden. The Green Cathedral is basically group of trees, planted in the layout of the cathedral of Reims, France. 30 meter high Italian poplars are planted in the layout of the pillars of a church. A daring idea to create art, and it actually worked out. What also appeals to me is that this kind of art is larger than an individual. The planning of the project took 9 years and growing the threes took another 9 years. The creation will eventually destroy itself when the trees grow old. Also, the cathedral can be appreciated best when seen from high up, it seems that the green cathedral was designed for drone photography.

It was cold when we walked to area: rain puddles on the ground were frozen. For the shoot, Luz walked from the entrance of the cathedral to the main altar area, posed by lying down in different poses, and afterwards walked back. This gave me the opportunity to make rising and descending shots, and some walking and running shots. The walking and running shots were better than the last shoot, the symmetric layout of the cathedral made it easier to navigate.

The rising shots were difficult due to the height which is required to see the whole 150 meter long cathedral: the drone needed to get really high to get the cathedral in one photo. Perhaps shoots can be done by taking a more tilted view. However the photos were great, the catherdral looked beautiful from above. I finalised some sessions by taking the drone up to the level of the tree tops, straight above the alter area and starting a Litchi pano. During the last pano shot, the iPhone app stopped, I could determine that the cold caused the battery to stop working properly.

Together with Luz I walked to the area to take the drone manually down. However at first I did see the drone where I expected it: in the middle of the cathedral. The drone had drifted about 5 meters from the start location, and hovered dangerously close to one of the poplars. From below, I could not distinguish clearly the orientation of the drone. How could I safely move it away from the trees? I did the right thing: moving the drone upward cleared it from all obstacles and was independent of orientation.

Lessons learned: landart are great locations for dronude shoots, Litchi app crashes are related to cold iPhone, drone can drift during Pano

To Do: learn about hand and feet heaters

Ideas for future shoots: drone shots from high up, but from an angle and with a visible horizon. More land art shoots.