Variety - Snow Kites

[Photo-John]

I'm not claiming this is a great photo. But it's different. And not being much of a team sports guy, I get bored with the ball sports photos - even when they're good. So I thought I'd toss this in just for the sake of diversity. I took it on Saturday, at Powder Mountain ski resort, about an hour north of Salt Lake City. It was some sort of competition or festival. I only took a couple of photos because I only had my point-and-shoot and was more interested in skiing than taking pictures. But I still kinda like this, if only because it's a curious subject.

[BFiredup]

I think this is awsome....
Different is good....LOL

[brmill26]

Haha, this is good for a break up. It might not be the next great poster, but it's still a cool shot. And aside from that, I never knew the kite surfer thing was done with snow boards too.

[retroactiv]

I couldn't tell they were on snow boards until you made that post, but holy cow that has to be one of the safest sports out there, not. I thought that the kites looked pretty cool, wish you would have gotten some closer shots I'm sure if they were using kites to board around that they were doing some cool tricks.

[Photo-John]

Some were on snowboards and some were on skis. I would have needed an SLR to get photos or I would have had to go out there. And that would have meant some serious hiking. And I am no willing to hike for snow kite photos. It might be fun, but I tried to take kiteboarding photos once and became an instant non-fan. It's no good for photos because you can't get a good photo with both the person and the kite in the same image. Blah. I'm also sort of a gravity sports snob and I don't like how they use the kite to cheat gravity. Kiteboarding tricks look more like gymnastics to me than action sports.

But what the hell. It was there and I had a camera. I had to take some pictures, right? If I'd had the Olympus E-3 - my SLR for the day - I would have taken some better ones. Maybe next time. Maybe not :P

[mtbbrian]

If you were doing a picture story on this sport, I would think this would be a photograph you'd want to include in it. It's an interesting photograph, it's just not good enough to hold its own.
Brian

[Photo-John]

If you were doing a picture story on this sport, I would think this would be a photograph you'd want to include in it. It's an interesting photograph, it's just not good enough to hold its own.
Brian

I totally agree. Later in the day it looked like they were going off. But they were way out in a powder skiing area. And the powder was all snow-crusted on Saturday. It wasn't worth the effort. Plus, if I wanted to get serious, I also would have needed to go back to the car for the real camera. Bottom line - it was a ski day and not a photo day. Sacrifices were made for skiing and not for photos