A few from the Balloon Festival

Here are a few shots from the Balloon Festival in Colorado Springs. I got there early and ran into Bob setting up. After chatting with him for a bit, I went and setup to wait for the show. The wait turned into about an hour of delays and uncertainty whether or not they would launch. When they finally did, the cloudy conditions and lack of wind made our location not so appealing. I decided to pack up the tripod and move into the masses to try and salvage a few shots out of the day. Anyhow, I wound up with a few ok shots... sorry for the frame/watermark. I am too lazy to do a version just for here, as I usually run a macro to export for my flickr page. C&C welcome.

More coming as soon as I can figure out why I can't reply with an image, being that I am a paying member. =P

Make sure your images files are j-peg and under 200kb with no more than 700 pixels on the long side. You need to do the upload in the reply. That always works for me so should work for you too.

Great placement of the ballons, don't care too much for your watermark where it is located.

Hi Koveh,

It was great to meet you! I like the fact there's no obvious "merges" between the balloons. If you were to crop off the left half, you'd end up with a nice cover shot for some magazine - a subject we cover in my Biz of Photography seminar.

Regards, Ken

#2

#3

The blue skies make this image pop. Really nice.

Nice compositions! #3 with the sense of scale is well done indeed.

Thank you, and thanks Jack for the info on uploads. My issue must have been the image size (all my images are 700 on the longest), but the image size must have been the problem. =)

Fine compositions! You really did a great job at this place.

You did well, Koveh, and it was great meeting you.
If work would just cooperate (like go away!), I'll get a couple of mine posted on here...

Koveh, some great shots here. I'll be going to a balloon festival in October and am curious what lens length worked the best for you at the festival?

Some good images here Koveh. I especially like 1 and 3. I think Bob has a good idea about cropping number 1 and using it as a possible stock photo!

All nice, but #2 is my favorite. Don't know whether the baloon is coming up or down, but there's something about a crumpling smiley that makes me grin.

Thanks all for the kind words and suggestions. I will try to crop the first one a little differently and see how it turns out. #2 was the balloon being filled up, but I liked that particular shot because the guy in the background peeking through gave a bit of scale to the size of these things. =)

Carol, I took both my wide angle 17-55 and my 70-200 telephoto, but all my shots are with the 17-55. All shots are also hand held, even though I was there with the tripod setup to take the reflection pics. I ended up changing plans and headed into the crowds for these shots. The people with the balloons were extremely nice about photographers getting up close to take pictures, which was great.

Great shots, Koveh! I was there Sat and Sun, but only ran into Ken on Sun. My balloon shots will have to wait a while though, I'm still only about half through my Iceland trip photos back in July.

Great images! Very nice color on all, but I really like the color in the second image.

Nice work, #3 is really cool, I like the way the balloons lead up to each other.