Balloon Sneak Peek

Vaughn McMillan

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I went out to the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque both mornings last weekend and watched two of the Mass Ascension events under perfect ballooning weather. I shot over 600 photos, so it's going to take me a bit of time to sort through them and pick out a couple dozen or so to show other people.

In the meantime, here's a panorama shot I took Saturday morning before the sun was up and before the majority of the balloons were in the air. This is about 100 balloons; there were about 550 total that flew. Still a lot fewer than the mid-1990s when we'd have 1000+ balloons flying. They had to cut back on the number of balloons due to the decline in the number of safe landing spots. A lot of empty spaces now have buildings on them.

Balloon Fiesta 2012 - 13 Oct 2012 - Pano 1 - 1024.jpg


Click here to see a larger version (6400 x 1832) of this photo. Beware...it's almost 9 MB in size, so you probably don't want to click this if you're on a dial-up connection.

I'll post more pics once I've gone through them all.
 
That triangular one in the middle is a real odd one.

Yeah, I'd not seen that one before this year. I wonder how it handles in the air.

Very cool! I think I'll put this event on my bucket list.

I highly recommend it. I've seen the mass ascensions many, many times, and it's still awe-inspiring every time. Seeing a balloon up close is very neat. Seeing a dozen or so is even better. But seeing several hundred is so cool it's really hard to describe.
 
An even better one, shot at ground level. It starts out a bit dark, because the balloons started taking off right before sunrise. You can see the effect of the sun coming up over the mountains, because that's when the box winds start. You can see balloons lift off and move toward the camera, then they go up a couple hundred more feet and travel in the opposite direction. This area is famous among balloonists worldwide because of the "Albuquerque Box". With a bit of luck, a good balloonist can take off from the field, fly for 30 to 60 minutes in four different directions, and come back to land on the field.

http://youtu.be/YBSwh27V6MM


Brent, yep, this is the Albuquerque event. I used to take the full week off work to go crew at it, even after I moved to LA.
 
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