kiters

The Windscape Kite Festival is an annual event held in Swift Current Saskatchewan. Each year a number of “specialty” kite flyers are invited and I was one of the chosen to demonstrate Kite Aerial Photography (KAP). I was also given a display area for a number of my prints and I donated a print to the Silent Auction. I was grateful for the all expenses paid mini-holiday to go fly my aerial photography gear and the chance to meet the other brands of specialty kite flyers. I was also asked to offer back to the organizers a few aerial shots of the proceedings for possible use in future year’s publicity campaign.

The Saturday morning the winds were fairly strong but I managed to do some Kite Aerial Photography. Since I couldn’t be sure that the weather was going to co-operate all weekend for aerial photography, I quickly dashed around to do as many overall perspective shots as I could so that my obligations to provide photography to the organizers could be fulfilled. In the end I was thankful I had done that because from Saturday lunch time to the end of festival the wind was too strong for many forms of kite flying. I tried briefly Sunday afternoon but could hardly hold onto the gear and after a few shots I had to abandon the Sunday session. The only people flying by that time were the stunt kite people who could just manage to use their kites in such conditions.

I used the non-flying time to answer questions about KAP and also to do some ground based photography of celebrity kiters and kites themselves. I’ll post some of these shots in another gallery in the near future.

This gallery contains the aerial shots that I took the Saturday morning of the festival and one shot that I managed in the five minute Sunday afternoon flight.

Many thanks to the Windscape Kite Festival organizers for the invitation.

These low-level aerial images were taken from a camera suspended below a kite line (Kite Aerial Photography – KAP).

Aerial view of the Windscape Kite Festival 2011 - Swift Current, Saskatchewan.

Inflatable Owl Kite at the Windscape Kite Festival 2011 - Swift Current, Saskatchewan.

Aerial downward looking view of a large kite being readied for flight in front of one of the flyers tents. Windscape Kite Festival 2011 - Swift Current, Saskatchewan.