Hand Magic

Pure bliss. I spent Sunday with Bella and her mom at the Kite Festival in Lincoln City, Oregon. Bella, now sixteen months old, had her own tiny kite to fly--and succeeded in getting it airborne. But what really knocked me out is that she watched the iQuad Kite Ballet people (the link is a minute-and-a-half video) manipulate their kites to music. It was awe-inspiring. The people who held the kite strings waved their hands and arms in the air in wonderful ways to move the kites. Bella seemed to think they did it all by hand magic. She tried moving her hands to make kites dance, and I think she succeeded. In this photograph, those are the iQuad kites being lined up in the background, and those are some of their kite-cases leaning against the log just behind Bella.

I made over five hundred pictures. A tiny selection of them is here.

I'm going to be less present on Blip for the next while, so I can get some writing done. I'll check in occasionally to see what's happening, but I won't be posting regularly (not that I ever have done). All you photographers out there--I wish you more hand magic.

P.S. For those interested in more about iQuad and kite ballet, here's a five-minute video that features John Barressi (who we saw perform) doing the hand magic Bella saw. It doesn't show how four to six people can do this in coordination. That's even more miraculous.