Come Fly Away
This week I dragged my lazy butt out of bed at 3:30am Saturday morning to attend the Plainville Hot Air Balloon festival and it was so worth it. This was my first time attending the festival so I had no idea what to expect. All I knew was there would a hot air balloon launch (hopefully more than one). I was pleasantly surprised there were closer to 2 dozen balloons, all being launch simultaneously. It was chaos but a very pretty and pleasant sort of crazy. I found myself in a conundrum of whether to film the action on my iphone or snap some photos which obviously I choose the latter.
As the balloons began their preflight prep I was able to take a few photos of pilots testing their equipment; and for those pyromaniacs out there, this included their burners. It was a spectacular sight seeing a 12-20ft flame flash into the cold air at 6am in the morning, sometimes multiple flames would go off at the same time across the field. I got a few decent photos of the pyrotechnics but the real fun started when the balloons start to fill. Technic color mountains sprung up like bean stalks all around me. The experience was exciting as I was in the middle in of the action, perhaps too close. I brought my RF 28mm-70mm zoom lens, with my 24mm as a backup incase I needed a wider lens. There were times I felt 28mm wasn’t wide enough or 70mm wasn’t tight enough. Since I was so close I had limited movement and had to be extremely aware of my surroundings at all times. Not only where their balloons going up everywhere, every square inch of open space was packed with people trying to get their social media pics. If I had to do it again I would work with a tighter lens in the morning during the preflight prep to get some closer behind the scene shots, perhaps a 70-200mm and later switch to a 24mm and make sure I am position father away when the balloons are fully deployed. Even with the 24mm I was too close 50% of the time to get decent framing.
Through out the mid to late morning I kept my iso low as it was a sunny day with little cloud cover. Only in the early morning did I adjust my iso to compensate for the dark morning hours. The balloons moved very slow as they do so I didn’t find my self having to deal with motion blur if anything.
In conclusion, if you have not attended the Plainville Hot Air Balloon festival, I would highly recommended it. It is free and there is something magical watching them float away in which ever way the wind takes them. Just a general tip, if you plan on watching the balloon launch in the morning, go early. This is a popular event and parking fills up fast.
