Wide End View.

This was a day of stretching.

The second day of the Rio Grande Balloon Classic competition.

I went and shot a massive amount of b-roll shots.. walls, gps's, baggies, food, people... People are fun when they are Pilots of crew.. they will usually give me a good smile.. go back to what they were doing and ignore me as I take odd pictures from strange angles. They probably expect me to do something different. I like finding that different thing... like below..

I didn't post any shots of any of that today on facebook but I will. I wanted to get right to the balloons. Since I ran off to help a friend get in the air first then abandoned them to race off North to catch the competitors as they came into the first target... it was a bugger of a variable day. No track stayed true for more than a moment. Expecting a nice straight line was ridiculous. Our world champ hit dead center of the target. He made it look easy too.

I will post those to my website later as it is a heck of a lot of shots and I didn't touch the front or the back... The back was the propaning of the balloons after... just couldn't get to them.. Ran out of time.

I will though because there is a bunch of good stuff there....

What I will post below is what else I saw that was neat-o.


Heaven New Mexico.

 From far far away you could still see all of those Pilots out there riding the Heavens Waves to find a target. This shot is nice and clear and bright even from this distance.

Crack of Dawn.

 I had to do some heavy editing to remove the ugly light poles from this shot but it was well worth it.

Still reaching for it.

 Someones missing glove still reaching out of the sand towards the sound of the burners. Trite but fun to envision... Hopefully there isn't a crewmember under there too.

A distant Kiss.

 From the other end of the view. KKisses above the crest of the hill from where the first shot of all the balloons in the sky was taken. Zoom in on it and its nice and clear.

Oval, Square, Grade.

What the hell? In a graded area of nowhere Mesa was this nice neat square with a noce oval cut out of it. I can only guess what its for with the wood peg above. Maybe a water run off experiment? A temporary pool? Someones big footprint!

So much seen today... My ears are ringing with the amount of things going on....

My banner today is of the rally and VARA wines who is a major sponsor. Just fun edit of four things.

 I didnt do too good of a job on this but my eyes are pretty much bleeding right now.

I have sun spots on the sun spots in my eyes. Logo for the day.

Must get ready for tomorrow! Must!

I think I need this! What an awesome rig. I would cinch them up higher as I would not like my cameras banging into my butt.... Love that they are around the back and not the front.

Nifty!