Kite-surfing at Barna

I’m enjoying a wonderful few days in Galway at what will, I suspect, prove to be one of the events of the year – the Volvo Ocean Race.  I spent yesterday checking out good spots along the coast for viewing the highlight of the weekend – the In-Port race, taking advantage of the fact that the 7 boats involved were doing a practice run on the course, and I had a free afternoon to watch them.

Some of the best views yesterday at least were from Silver Strand (which seems to be officially known as Trá na gCeann), just outside Barna village to the west of Galway city.   It helped yesterday that the sun was beating down and consequently there were quite a few visitors to the beach even on a Friday afternoon.

Amongst them was Michael Fitzsimons, who works with Fáilte Ireland, and enjoys kite surfing in his spare time.  I had arrived at the beach to photograph the 7 Volvo Open 70 boats that are competing in the round the world race, but couldn’t resist using Michael and his kite to frame some of the scenes.

I got chatting to Michael after I took this photo and we realised that we had met last year when I refereed his tag rugby team – the Fáilte Tryers – in Wesley College in Dublin.  I took a few more shots, including one that he agreed to try out where he performed a jump with the yachts in the background.  I’ll post that in a while once I’ve had a chance to email him on the shots I got.

The sun was so strong yesterday that at times it made for challenging light – a polarizing filter would have helped to cut down on the glare from the sea in this shot, and perhaps allowed me to expose it so that Michael wasn’t almost in silhouette, but even with the exposure as it is, the yachts, the kite, the kite surfer, and even the helicopter, all combine to give a nice balance to the shot compositionally, and, I think at least, to create a nice image.