Or as the little rabbit put it.... "ear wiggles".
I was standing this morning on a hill West of the launch site. I was there about 45 minutes early for the balloon family meet and expected to greet the sunrise standing alone and enjoying the quiet before the sun clipped the Northern edge of the Sandias. No such luck.
I had a truck with two guys and two dogs drive up the hill and stop to ask if I was waiting for the sunrise... I said yup and they gave me a thumbs up and went off... then two people wandered around me with their dog and stopped talking and stopped coming my way and turned around when they saw me beside my truck... I was an imposing figure in my bright yellow jacket and cameras I guess. Lastly I had a little baby rabbit bounce up the hill towards me and stop about ten feet away, ears almost as long as it was... it stopped.. looked at me.. turned a bit.. sat there and then just before the sun started over the edge bounced into the bush beside the truck.
I took a lot of pictures of the area across me and down below me before remembering to click my camera over to shutter priority... Then things looked better... Not that I could see it then but later I could tell the difference in focus and depth.
Total shots today 1,285. Total worthy shots.. dunno yet but darn near most of them. I loaded a bunch of my favorites up to facebook for friends.... They were fun... Lots of good laughs.
After the sun had cracked the mountain and I was unable to see due to staring at the sun too much I drove down and met up with everyone... That had me start shooting everything in sight that was worth a shot.. and no.. not just a balloon standing around either.. which.. looks like a balloon standing around... not very interesting.. so .... much shooting...! Both zoom and fish-eye. The fish-eye was fun because it damn near captures everything just in front of the camera. If I am not careful it will catch the toes of my boots.
It was a good day.. good friends...good photographs. Lots to edit and go through... I did a four picture treatment with a few because of the subjects... and the first is a shoot out between me and Ted ( In white shirt below ). He posted a picture of me taking a picture of him. What he didn't know was that I was already shooting him from waist level... Five total and four clear... Hah! Good for not knowing exactly where the camera was pointing. So fun... here are the sets...
Gotcha Ted!
And two of Eric. This is cool because this is a Fantasy Envelope with a Kubicek burner /basket bottom end. Very cool. Very lively... so two for Eric....
Its funny how the fish-eye aged him.. or it looks like it did... He has very long arms too. Nice burns there.
Last on the quad sets is Keith coming in to a landing. I was watching and through about 10 shots the crew were quite interesting to watch. I chose four for the set.... Look closely....
I did take a bunch more and I could stuff a ton here but that would be stupid. I will put some in tomorrows blog that no one has seen mixed with some I really enjoyed that I posted to FB today.
A good day with good friends in the middle of nowhere and it was zero stress, zero frustration. Just what a Saturday is supposed to be.
Facebook banner and logo.. also from today.... I will post the original shot of the banner as I had to stretch it to fit the banner size which sucked but I wanted to use the shot bad.
Original.
So I think I will go upload a few more to FB then call it a night... Tomorrow... logo for trailer... for sure.
Enjoy your Saturday night... don't have to get up early!!! Even though I was already up today.... sigh.
