Up, Up and Awayyyyy......

CTBA - Lighter Than Air!
Lake Travis - Austin, Texas
August 2, 2008

I was scouring web sites for "something" and I ran across this announcement about the annual hot air balloon launch over Lake Travis, which happens to be here in Austin, so I started doing some research. After finding tons of articles about last year's even, I finally found a link to the CTBA main site and there, big as a bull, was the announcement for this years even - two weeks out.

After reading about it, reviewing the map and trying to figure out where it was, (keep in mind, I've only lived here a year) I made plans to go and have some fun. About three days after, I asked Roy (my photo partner in crime) if he had heard about it, which he had not, but he was just as excited as I and we decided to go together and make a morning out of it.

Saturday, August 2 arrives and Roy shows up in my driveway around 5:40 am and we head out to Mansfield Park on the dam. After a briskly breezy and hazy week, it was a surprisingly clear and calm morning.... YAY for us! We arrived at the park around 6:00 am to see that it was already becoming crowded with onlookers and there had yet to be anyone unpacking or setting up balloons. It was still pretty dark, but I had expected people to be preparing for the sunrise lift-off.

Anyhow, I found this tree and the sun was rising, so I took a few shots. (See previous blog picture.) Told Roy to come get a few shots and his turned out better in my opinion. I'm still pretty green with my equipment - it's nothing like what I'm used to, but I do like the instant notification that your shot sucked. (It's called an LCD display.) In the "old" days, I had to bracket the crap out of my photos and hope everything worked. (my meter, my battery, my shutter, my brain.... you know.. the essentials)

Well, the ballooners started prepping equipment so I started crawling all over, finding whatever vantage point I could for a good shot. Now comes a funny story (in my opinion).

I'm always very conscious of others when I'm shooting. I make every attempt to ensure that I'm not screwing someone else's shot. So, prepping is being done, and I see some guy standing off to the side of a basket with his arms crossed. He has no camera. So I move over, nod my head at him and proceed to take a shot of the ballooners checking their equipment. He promptly says, "Great, just step in front of me while I'm taking a picture," uncrossing his arms to show the point-and-shoot mini camera he had under his left arm. I apologized and said to please take his shot ahd he replied, "Nope... the shot's gone... it's just gone." I had to chuckle.... the basket was still there... and the sun doesn't change much in lighting over the period of 10 seconds.

That situation aside, I met a ton of photographers, and one really nice fellow had an old-school Leica, of which I was quite envious. We talked about my former darkroom (no basements in Austin) and he told me about his, which was set up in his laundry room. (And, no... I would not be able to do that.)

So, this shot was one of the latter ballons in the event. I just happened upon them filling it up and the basket was in the right position for a center-on shot. The flame tender was not in the frame and it turned out perfect. (In my humble opinion) We took a few more of the last balloons floating away and headed back to Round Rock for some breakfast tacos... oh my, they were great!

You can see more of these photographs at my website under the "Events / CTBA" tag.