Hot Air Balloons

A trip to Decatur, AL, over the weekend just past, and some time spent with one of my truly favorite photographic subjects -- hot air balloons. I can easily recall how in my earlier days I'd concentrate on balloons in the air.

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But the thing is, it taks effort to avoid redundancy, where all the shots seem to be variations on the same theme -- only the color and the cloud formations change. So I turned back to my photojournalist's training. Set the story up, I thought. Involve the audience in the subject; explain...demonstrate. So I tried some of that, too, the 'splaining thing. And congregations of balloons, too. Lots of colors, shapes, forms...playing with the late-afternoon's directional light.

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Eventually, it came back to me trying to show just what is is that attracts me to the balloons: I love the interplay of the colors; and I find the shapes and textures fascinating. And then, I love discovering how things work, so I get a huge charge out of looking "under the skirts" as the balloons are being inflated And that I do sincerely love, leaning into the gondola and shooting straight up into the envelope of the balloon. Great stuff.

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The balloon shots are generally shot off-hand -- no tripod -- in order that I can be mobile, moving from ballooon to balloon, changing angles and lenses rapidly. In this instance I went onto the field with a single camera body -- my Nikon D700, the SB-900 flash to use in opening up shadows and compensating for backlighting situations, and the essential 3-lens kit: 14-24, 24-70, and 70-200, all 2.8 lenses.

The big deal is getting close enough to the subject, or zooming sufficiently, to eliminate distracting elements -- there are, after all, always scads of people wandering around a balloon event, not to mention all the ropes, fans, tanks, and trucks involved in the process.