First aerial photograph by kite

The first undisputed photos captured by a kite-borne camera, as recognized by the Kite Aerial Photography Worldwide Association in 1985, were snapped by photography pioneer Arthur Batut (France, 1846–1918) over Labruguière, Tarn, France, in May 1888. Titled "Le Chemin et le Ruisseau" ("The Track and the Brook"), the work is now housed (along with his equipment and many other of his photos) at the dedicated Espace Photographique Artur Batut museum in Labruguière.

Batut built a 2.5-m-tall (8-ft 2-in) , 1.75-m (5-ft 9-in) diamond-shaped kite with paper and a sturdy frame of Carolina poplar wood. The lightweight camera was made from wood, kraft paper and cork fitted with a 9 x 12-cm glass plate negative and a "Guillotine" shutter that was triggered by the releasing of elastic bands after a tinder-wick fuse has burned.

There is a claim by another photography pioneer and meteorologist, Edmund Archibald (UK), to have captured aerial photographs using a kite the previous year in 1887, employing a small explosive charge to activate the shutter, however his alleged photographs were never published, only limited details about the equipment, location and date were given (as well as conflicting dates of 1887 and July 1888 by Archibald) and no witnesses were present to attest to the experiments taking place, so evidence is severely lacking.

The first person to take an aerial photograph was Nadar, aka Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (France, 1820–1910), who in 1858 photographed the French village of Petit-Bicêtre (Petit-Clamart) from an air balloon tethered at an altitude of 80 m (262 ft). The oldest aerial photograph in existence today is a shot of Boston in Massachusetts, USA, taken from a balloon in 1860 by James Wallace Black (USA).