Photographing the Fiesta

The premier event for photographers in Albuquerque is the annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.  This year's Fiesta, which ended last Sunday, featured 540 hot air balloons from 22 countries including Russia, Japan, Norway, Mexico, Belgium, and Brazil.

Over the 10-day run of the event there are lots of balloon-related activities, but the big attractions are the Mass Ascensions, when all the registered balloons launch from a 78-acre park on the north side of Albuquerque.  As you can see from the photo above, spectators can walk right onto the field and watch as the balloons are inflated and lift off.

On other days, if the wind is right, the balloons fly northwest from the field and over our neighborhood, landing nearby.  This year they came two days in a row.  (That's our house in the first picture below.)

Photographing the balloons is a joy and a challenge wrapped into one:  beautiful shapes and colors for the eye, but all moving more or less randomly, changing positions constantly, and none under my control.

Consequently, as a  photographer I have to compose on the fly (pun intended), trying to get a pleasing arrangement of light and subject into the frame.  After shooting, I work with the images on my computer to improve them by cropping or adjusting colors, intensity, saturation, etc.  Here are some examples.

First, I look for pleasing or interesting spatial arrangements of the balloons.  This is easier, of course, when the balloons are still on the ground.

And while the balloons are on the ground, I look for the drama of firing the propane burners to heat the air inside the balloons and allow them to stand up . . .

Then, of course, comes the drama of the launch, as the balloons lift slowly off the ground and catch the prevailing breeze . . .

Once the balloons are launched, the air is full of photo ops, but they are constantly changing from second to second, due to the movements of all the balloons.  I look for -- and sometimes wait for -- a pleasing arrangement in the air, as in this sequence from a not good arrangement (basket cut off) . . .

to OK . . .

to better (but still a problem with the basket cut off) . . . 

to really good (with a lucky capture of the moon):

Speaking of the moon, because it was there, I looked for opportunities to include it with a balloon or two:

Sometimes an uninteresting wide shot can be cropped in post-processing to yield a nice composition:

Depending on where you stand, you can see the balloons floating directly overhead like colorful marbles in the sky . . .

and occasionally you'll get a surprise, when one marble becomes two:

To convey the scale of the Mass Ascension I use wide shots from further away:

On the other end of the process -- balloons flying over and landing -- I look for many of the same elements, but with some variations.

I use features on the landscape (houses, trees, and people) to provide a sense of scale and power:

As on previous days, the moon was still up, so I looked for nice pairs like this one:

And I looked for pleasing arrangements of balloons in the sky and on the ground:

Landing approaches brought some balloons directly overhead, so close you could say "Good morning!" to the people in the basket, and they would respond in kind.

As a general rule, to get a well-lit image, you should have the sun shining on the subject from behind or from the side of the camera position.  But for artistic effect I also look for images that are back-lit, with balloons in between the sun and the camera, like these.

Balloon landings can be very gentle or very bumpy and dramatic, depending on the wind speed at ground level.

Here's a video of a bumpy landing.  The basket touches down first and slows down quickly, but the balloon itself acts like a giant sail and continues to travel at the speed of the wind.  So the basket and its passengers are dragged bouncing along until someone (or something) can bring it to a halt.

On the last day that balloons landed in our neighborhood, I had two pieces of good fortune.  First, one of the "special shapes" balloons -- Airabelle, the Creamland Dairy cow, landed in the field near our house.  The balloon is huge, even by commercial balloon standards -- literally as big as a house!

The balloon landed right in front of me; it would have landed on me if I hadn't moved.

It landed fairly gently, and the chase crew of about a dozen people was on the scene quickly to deflate and pack up the balloon.

My second piece of good luck was the arrival of a more normal-sized balloon, one of the last to land that morning.  The wind was lighter, so this landing wasn't as bumpy as the one I showed earlier.

After the balloon and basket came to a stop, I ran over to help hold down the basket while the pilot and two passengers waited for their crew to arrive.  The pilot graciously invited me to climb in and take a few photos, and even fired the propane burner a few times for me to shoot.  So while I wasn't flying, I got a sense of what it feels like to be beneath a giant balloon:

If you would like to see these images and videos in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!

Storm Clouds at Sunset

We don't get much rain out here in New Mexico.  Average annual rainfall is about 9.5 inches.  And when the rains come, they are almost always scattered, falling unpredictably from place to place, like the rain you see in the image below, rather than uniformly across the land.  Frequently, the rain doesn't even make it to the ground because the air is so dry (a phenomenon called "virga").

But sometimes the atmosphere sucks the moisture up from the land and builds the clouds . . . oh, the clouds . . . towering clouds that grow and swirl and spread like nothing you've ever seen before!

Last Sunday, September 17, was one of those days.  We had scattered clouds all day, but toward evening, the conditions were right for one of those monster clouds.

As we were eating dinner, Linda noticed that the light outside was changing.  So I poked my head out the back door and . . . Whoa!

7:02p MDT

The sun was setting, and the light changed quickly as the cloud exploded in slow motion:

7:05p MDT

Here's a closer look:

7:07p MDT

Notice how, even under this huge cloud, the rain (lower right quadrant of the image) was only falling in scattered areas.

An even closer look shows the power of the moving air:

As the sun fell below the horizon, the lower portion of the cloud progressively lost its color until all was gray:

7:12p MDT

7:14p MDT

The cloud show was over in less than 15 minutes.  And then . . . the lightning show began!

If you would like to see these images in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!

Junkyard Beauty

                                                                                     Beauty can be seen in all things.

                                                                                     Seeing and composing the beauty is what separates
                                                                                     the photograph from the snapshot.

                                                                                                                    -- Matt Hardy



Though it might seem unlikely, junkyards are great places for photography.  The challenge, as Matt Hardy notes in the epigraph to this post, is to find the beauty and get it in the frame.

For me, finding beauty in a junkyard is primarily an exercise in close-up (or "macro") photography.  Details, rather than full depictions, are where I find visual interest and, yes, beauty.  Multi-colored -- and multi-textured -- rust and peeling paint on the exteriors; headlights, hubcaps, and door handles; busted grills and broken glass . . . all of these are prime candidates for my eye in search of beauty.

A few days ago I went with my photo buddy Barry to the Broadway Truck Salvage yard on the south side of Albuquerque. 

 We were greeted by Ali, the ebullient office manager, and granted free run of the yard.  

For this shoot, I decided to use only a 50mm "macro" lens, which is best for close-ups and details, but works well as a prime lens -- it just doesn't zoom, so I have to "zoom" with my feet.

For this post I'll start with the large scale images, then move to smaller elements, and finally the more abstract close-ups.

Along the way I discovered one derelict car inhabited by an arachnid:

Ultimately, my primary target was cool-looking rust and paint on fenders, doors, and hoods.  The closer you look, the more beautiful the subject becomes.

Sometimes the patterns and textures worked both horizontally . . .

. . . and vertically:

Most fun was looking for faces in the rust.  These two are the same rust patch, but viewed from different directions and framed just right:

I found E.T. . . .

. . . and a fish.

My favorite face appeared on this old (1970s era) Cadillac.  Do you see it?

I call it the Junkyard Scream (homage to Edvard Munch):

If you would like to see these images -- and more -- in a larger format, visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!