Sunday Selections # 169



Welcome back to Sunday Selections!

This once-a- week-meme was originally begun by Kim of Frog Ponds Rock, as a way to showcase some of the many photos we all take, but don't get around to showing on our blogs.

The rules are very simple:-
1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title
2. link back to me, River, somewhere in your post
3. leave me a comment so that I know you've joined in and can come over and see what you've posted.
4. hop on over to The Elephant’s Child to see more of her wonderful photos.

Kath and Andrew often join in as well, although Kath has been quite busy lately and unable to join us.
There are several other participants now though:
Jackie K at WorkingThrough It
Gillie at Random Thoughts From Abroad

I usually go with a theme for my Sunday Selections and this week I have some photos I took of the kite festival at Semaphore Beach.

The festival goes over three days and I chose day one to go, but it was a disappointing day.
There weren't a lot of kites and there wasn't enough breeze to get them up in the air or keep them up for long if they did get up. 
I heard later that the next two days were much better. 

It isn't the same as the Kite Flying Competition held later in the year, I saw a bit of that when I lived at Semaphore, the kites then are amazing and the operators are so skilled with manouvering them.

Anyway, here are some of my photos.
First, the ones which I don't consider to be true kites. They are blow-ups, so in my eyes they are balloons, not kites.

plane and a butterfly. These blow up varieties are anchored by strings to a fixed point on the sand so aren't being "flown" as real kites are. The butterfly is not a balloon.

a dragon?

a pink whale, note all the strings needed to anchor it. 

a pair of legs.

a very colourful fish

a green frog.

Now for what I consider to be true kites, flown by adults and children holding strings on rods or reels, running up and down the sand trying to get their kites up high and keep them there.

the designs on some of these are truly lovely. A far cry from the crossbars and brown paper with newspaper tails seen when I was a kid.

I liked this one quite a lot.

a resting butterfly.

one of the colourful kids kites. There were many junior kites in pale pastels and some were so small, being held on to by very young children, although they didn't fly very high. 
I enjoyed seeing so many very small kids out on the sand with their parents and kites.

careful, don't tangle the strings!

a more traditional kite shape.

this one flew quite well, several times.

another good flyer.

I liked this one, the man flying it was able to make it swoop around really well. Capturing the photo was tricky, I'd focus and the kite would swoop away...
















Comments

  1. Wow. What fun.
    I agree with you about the blow-ups. I would love to see them, and think they are fun BUT they are not what I think of as kites.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The kites are wonderful and so colourful. Yes, I remember those child hood kites. They were very difficult to get into the air. Really, quite a bit of skill is needed to fly kites well.

    ReplyDelete
  3. We had a lot of fun with kites as kids but nothing as grand as these, we made our own and mostly didn't fly very well.
    Merle.........

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yes, the kites have far more grace than the balloons.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Good job capturing movement without blur.
    I like the "real" kites very much. Something relaxing about watching kites in the air. Not enough kids fly them these days.
    When I was young, children and parents were always off flying somewhere - the river reserve, beach or local park always had kites above.
    I really like the shark design, but then, of course I would :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. The images are fabulous River, and I can but imagine how tricky the shots were!

    ReplyDelete
  7. These kites sweep and swoop by skilled hands! How wonderful to be there.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Elephant's Child; the real kites were so pretty to watch, but the balloons just hover in one spot.

    Andrew; I never made kites as a kid but some school friends did, they never flew very well. These days kites are made with parachute silk I think.

    Merle; I never made any, but friends did and tried to fly them off the jetty over the beach in Port Pirie, mostly they just landed in the water and fell apart.

    Joanne; balloons are pretty enough, but they just hover in one spot, so not as interesting as the real kites were.

    Vicki; these are some of the good shots from about 150 total, mostly I'd focus and click to find the kite had moved and I had blur or empty sky.
    One of the balloons was a humpback whale, I'll have to put that up sometime soon.

    Rose~from OZ; I spent a good hour trying to get one particular shot but eventually gave up. The flier was extremely skilled with swooping and hovering, I'd catch his kite hovering and as I focused he'd swoop it away to hover in front of another crowd of kids.

    Susan Kane; I'm going to find out when the kite flying competition is on later in the year and get back to the beach for that one. Those kites are fantastic.


    ReplyDelete
  9. It looks like a fantastic day. You did really well to capture the kites - with moving targets it's always hard to get a clear shot. I smiled at the pink whale because it reminded me of a terrible joke (not repeatable in polite company) that my brother told me years ago.

    Lovely to hear that there were lots of young kids out giving it a go - I remember how much fun we had as kids when we flew kites at the beach and how surprised we were by the powerful tug on the line when the wind really took control. Loads of happy memories.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Marie; I ended up with many, many shots of empty sky where a kite should have been. It's different from trailing a plane, they are just flying along a straight path, whereas kites will dip and swoop in any direction according to the wind or the handler.

    ReplyDelete
  11. These are beautiful. My brother lost several kites to the telephone wires when we were kids - just like Charlie Brown and the kite-eating tree :) It must be lovely to be able to see all these colourful ones at once.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Beautiful kites...just looking at the pics is relaxing. :)

    ReplyDelete
  13. Kites are so delightful to watch. I remember seeing a video of a man with I think it was 3 kites and he flew them all at the same time and had them land within a few inches of each other. It was truly fabulous.
    I remember when we would go down to the local park and fly a kite when my son was small. So many years ago.
    The blow up type are fascinating but as EC the real ones are best.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

kitchen tip #?????

being unaccustomed to public speaking,

I've been trying to contact Haagen-Dazs