Our Best Kite Pictures

Adelaide International Kite Festival 2009

Here's a selection of the very best kite pictures we managed to capture at the Adelaide International Kite Festival in March 2009. There's just 12, to avoid making this page excessively slow to load. I had fun going through all our raw imagery of the event, and cropping and resizing to best effect. I don't claim to be an artist or even a great photographer, but I still think you will enjoy these shots if kite-flying is in your blood!

To set the scene, the pic below is of the large UFO kite which has been a feature of the Adelaide kite festival for the past few years. The commentator and other officials often shelter under this inflatable flying saucer while directing the Festival.

Parafoil Kite Pictures

Here's a couple of typical large Festival parafoils. These are often used to string up non-flying inflatables and other so-called 'line laundry'. Sometimes they help to raise a flying inflatable higher than it would go on its own.

I thought this would logically fit after the first photo. Something to do with that Alien Intrusion on the right...

Another large large flat parafoil kite, with an eye-catching green and black abstract design on the lower sail surface. A matching tail tube in a loop helps to keep the kite stable. The long single tail tube below the loop might have been attached for even more stability. Or perhaps just for looks on this important day!

Delta Kite Pictures

Large colorful Deltas are another kite festival staple. At least in Western countries. Here's 3 nice examples, which have all bobbed up in previous years too.

This colorful Delta kite was floating about not far from the direction of the sun. This always gives opportunities for a good photo, with lens effects and the translucent sail fabric glowing with bright sunlight.

Up till now I just thought this image showed a pale-blue Delta with a flame effect along the trailing edge. However, looking closer, it appears to be a bird design with flaming wings and tail-feathers. A Fire-bird perhaps? Anyway, it makes for an eye-grabbing image!

We've seen this magnificent white Delta a few times now, always tethered quite close to the sand. On this occasion, the wind direction allowed us to get very close. The broad matching ribbon tails extend almost the full width of the trailing edge, and are quite long too, although that can't be seen in this photo.

There Has To Be A Sea Creature...

In this case, as usual, one of the most striking inflatables was this very large Killer Whale kite. It 'swam' convincingly in a breeze that was just strong enough to get it air-borne. Again, we were fortunate to be in quite a close position to get this shot. Also, the kite was on a fairly short line this year.

Muli-line Kite Pictures

Stunt kites were everywhere in 2009. 2-liners, 4-liners, flat-paneled and parafoil. Here are a couple of shots of these maneuverable kites in action.

This big beautiful Delta stunt kite trailed a very long narrow tubular tail, which traced out every move the stunter traced out in the sky. There were a number of these in the air from time to time, most of them well away from the cluster of single-liners near the jetty.

Unique shot hey? Somebody just happened to be pointing right at this quad stunt kite just as it was expertly hovered very close to the jetty. Perhaps the floating object was being pointed out to a young child. That's what we would have done with our Aren in similar circumstances!

Last But Not Least...

These 3 are all different types, so they get lumped into this last section. Nice kites though!

A great light-wind Cody, which if I remember rightly, uses 1/2 ounce rip-stop nylon and carbon-fiber spars. Hence it's very much lighter than a traditional Cody, even taking account of the smaller size.

This traditional Japanese Rokkaku looks like it is rather concerned about the Delta on its tail! Other Roks were actually from Japan, and were flown by men in traditional 'happy coats'. I saw a trio of these accidently tangle when winds were too light to keep them all up reliably.

I know nothing about this delightful bird kite, except that I just had to get a photo of it!

That's it for our kite pictures from the 2009 Adelaide kite festival. Quite a range of subject matter - everything from UFOs to birds!

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Last updated: 3 Oct 2009