Every year in June, the tranquil island of Fanø, situated just off the southwestern coast of Denmark just west of Esbjerg, transforms into a vibrant canvas of colors and creativity during the Fanø Kite Festival, For ordinary visitors, kite enthusiasts, and photographers, the festival offers a spectacle that captures the heart and imagination of visitors. But what exactly makes this event so unique?

The scenic backdrop of Fanø Island plays a pivotal role in the festival’s allure. With its pristine beaches, rolling dunes, and unobstructed views of the North Sea, the island creates a picturesque environment for kite flying. The expansive sandy beaches provide ample space for thousands of kites to take flight, making it a photographer’s dream. The contrast of the kites against the azure sky and the golden sands encapsulates nature’s beauty, providing countless opportunities for striking photographs.

The beaches on the west coast of Jutland are wide and have a hard surface of sand. Many of the beaches are accessible by car, and for a kite flyer that means everything. You can bring your equipment and several kites. On the Danish coasts to the west towards the North Sea, it is generally the case that it is almost always windy, and this is the first and most important condition when it comes to kite flying. The festival is so popular that it is estimated that there are between 5 and ten thousand kites in the air at any one time. In conversations with the kite “parents”, I found out that many buy their kites ready-made, but there are also many who are so passionate that they sew their kites in the winter and fly them in the summer.

On the beach you see many people taking photographs, and the scenery is also magnificent. But it is also popular for more passionate photographers to visit a kite festival. When you stand and point your camera at the kites, you have to think about the composition and filling the image area harmonically. Suddenly it’s right, and then it’s a matter of pressing the shutter button, because they are constantly moving in relation to each other, and then the perfect picture may have gone.

The first time I saw kites on the beach, I was very stunned. When you look at the kites in the air, there is a great variation in both size, expression and function. Many of them are incredibly large, so they need a very strong anchor to keep them from blowing away. When it comes to shape or expression, there are a lot of variations. I saw a 10-meter-long Lucky Luke with a cigarette in his mouth, a gigantic pink, happy pig flying next to the seven little dwarfs but without Snow White. But she was probably just going to the bathroom for a short while. A lot of Disney figures and even happy M&M pastilles with arms and legs I also saw giant dragons that don’t look as scary as they “really are”. Another type are parachute kites and large rings circling and jumping up and down on the beach.

Most kite flyers have several kites in the air at the same time, and when everything is running and the mechanics don’t need to be tinkered with too much, they sit under a parasol with a cold beer and enjoy the sight of the many kites. But there are also a few people who fly dirigble kites. You have to be alert at all times, and you can use the string to make daring maneuvers.

The festival is international, and I’ve been told that the kite flyers come from as far away as Japan, but there seems to be no reason to take a Japanese course this winter. Fanø is about 75 kilometers from the German Danish border, so the majority of the kite flyers were Danish and German, and most Germans. The summer houses along the west coast of Jutland are already very popular with Germans. They help to keep a large tourist industry going. In Denmark, camping in the open is not allowed. It has to be on approved campsites, so the local sites benefit from it, as the rest of the tourism industry.

I have a gallery from a similar festival on Rømø just south of Fanø