It Is Balloon!

The South County RI Balloon Festival was this weekend and to celebrate having my car back we got up at the very inhospitable hour of 4am to get to the field by 5:30 with the hopes of seeing some balloons fly out. Alas we could have slept another hour since they didn't start inflating the ones that were staying to be tethered for rides or leaving to fly back in until almost 6:30. There weren't very many people around at that hour (why I wonder? with tongue firmly planted in cheek) so the organizers were very cool with us walking around the field itself to photograph the balloons and the people. One rule-watch the ropes (oh and of course NO SMOKING!) The guys with "Big Max" the Remax balloon were really cool and let me walk inside while it was inflating. I took three handheld exposures and combined them in Photomatix since the lighting was pretty contrasty inside:


It seems like quite the ballet when the balloon is ready to upright, and fish-eye was perfect to capture the guys out in the field holding the lines as they gave "Grandma Buzzard" some hot air to lift her vertical.


We hung around, took a ride in "Big Max" (picture to come later) and finally the other balloons came across the treeline. It was over 18 knots in the upper atmosphere so they were zooming along. Only one actually made it land in the field, the rest overshot it by varying mileage. It was very hazy so I went to Luminous Landscape where I remembered a technique to decrease the haze using unsharp mask set at Amount 20%, Radius 50, Threshold 0. What this does is to increase the local contrast and the results were much improved.



That was most of the morning. We left and went home and took some long, much needed naps that afternoon and went back to catch the "Flying Wallenda's" high wire act and the Balloon Glow and Fireworks. More on that another day.