Interesting Nature Photos

[Effjay]

PhotoMac, keep us posted on your teaching travels. If you're ever close to Maryland and would consider letting an amateur with a new Nikon come to one of your classes, I'll happily make the trip. Your stuff is awesome!

Meanwhile, back in Colorado with my 'point and shoot' camera...

[Tcape]

Effjay, I have an old Canon S1 IS, and I loved that little camera. I upgraded to a Canon XT DSLR a few years ago, and I love it. But the Canon S3 IS is sure going a great job for you. Of course, we all aspire to the heights of PhotoMac! If we could just meet him somewhere and steal his stuff!

[corvus]

Here's one from some years back when I was chasing a lot of bugs.

[PhotoMac]

while going through an old hard drive, I found this one from our brief stay in MN.

this is behind a HUGE waterfall- Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis.

[Lauranyyfan]

Hello all-

Here's a few....

A big hobby of mine is sport kites, mainly the quadline kites by Revolution. I'm also into KAP, which is Kite Aerial Photography.

The first is a sunset in Keyport, NJ

The second was taken in Long Beach, WA

The bottom photo is KAP, taken in Newport, RI

[Effjay]

Laura, it's good to see another kiter on the ROC. I cut my teeth on a Rev and a 10 foot Flexifoil back in the day when I didn't know any better. Those were a couple tough kites to start learning with. Now I'm enamored with anything that flies, so here are some kites (including my friend holding my custom quad line TC Ultra Stained Glass Rose) and a few balloons from the Albuquerque annual balloonfest. Someday I'll post a couple powered paragliding pix when I get some good nature backgrounds in the shots.

[Effjay]

Oops, forgot a couple.

[Lauranyyfan]

Hello Effjay-

Very, very nice photos. I've crewed in the past and have flown in balloons, as well. .... what a beautiful thing!

The "Running of the Boles" is always fun for kids of all ages.

Here are some custom Revs: The green dragon is Bazzer (Barry Poulter) Masterpiece; as well as the eyes.

Do you still fly your Rev? Are you from the New Mexico area? Are you familiar with team flying? In Washington State, this past August we had 64 revs in the air, it was an unofficial world record. The official count (those that flew various formations together), I believe, was 54. That was one off of the official world record set in England last year.

One of the reasons for getting the RL was to have enough room to carry all of the kites!

[Lauranyyfan]

Hi Effjay-
BTW, the last shot of a dual line kite, with a girl holding it, was from Ocean City, MD, right? When? I was there twice this past year for both MIKE and Sunfest.

This photo isn't the greatest quality. I was doing a KAP session and didn't realize until I got home that I had been taking 10 second videos!!! So, I printed off of that. Too bad, there would have been some really great photos. Live and Learn!!!

[Effjay]

Originally Posted by Lauranyyfan

Hi Effjay-
BTW, the last shot of a dual line kite, with a girl holding it, was from Ocean City, MD, right? When? I was there twice this past year for both MIKE and Sunfest.

This photo isn't the greatest quality. I was doing a KAP session and didn't realize until I got home that I had been taking 10 second videos!!! So, I printed off of that. Too bad, there would have been some really great photos. Live and Learn!!!

You nailed it; that picture is in Ocean City (I live in Baltimore and have attended many of the O.C. kite events and a few at Wildwood). The girl is holding a TC Ultra kite which can be flown with two or four lines and will come sort of close to duplicating the flying characteristics of four line flying bowties. Unfortunately, I missed both shows at O.C. this last year, but I hope to do better in 2010. I'm sure the RL will hold my entire kite collection.

Your dragon kite is spectacular! Kudos to the person who put in the hours on that job. Even though I got a couple lessons from the original Rev designer (Joe Hadzicki), I'm not very good with precision flying, so I haven't tried team kiting. I can't even fly that darned bat-kite for more than a minute. I'm more a Quadrifoil "bag kite" kind of guy (Ted Dougherty design). That eventually led to my interest in the kite flying me, or powered paragliding where you strap on a backpack motor and propeller and harness yourself to a really big kite and run like a gooney bird until you're airborne. Here are a couple pix, but I'm afraid I'm getting a little off topic here, so it's time to go search my archives for more Interesting Nature Photos.