GlenOrsakPhotography

Balloon Landing

The sun's shadow points to the landing spot.

The sun's shadow points to the landing spot.
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NIKON D610

settings

Aperture f/9 ISO 200 Shutter 1/100 Focal Length 700/10

upload_date

Jan, 2016

Views

3334

Likes

+607

Awards

Legendary Award

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Contest Finalist in Balloons Photo Contest

Great Shot

Peer Award

+161

Superb Composition

+104

Top Choice

+49

Absolute Masterpiece

+44

Outstanding Creativity

+26

Magnificent Capture

+11

All Star

Superior Skill

Genius

Virtuoso

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Emotions

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Behind The Lens

Location

This image was created during the Gatineau Hot Air Balloon Festival that occurs annually in Gatineau, Quebec Canada which is very near Ottawa - Canada's capital city. The image was taken from another hot air balloon on September 5, 2015.

Time

This was an early morning project that developed in a completely unexpected direction. I was eager that morning to leave home on my own to focus exclusively on my photography and to capture images at the Hot Air Balloon Festival. I left home in the dark and arrived just around sunrise at the festival with an intention to capture images of the Balloons as they departed for the morning flight. I suddenly realized that there was room to accompany one of the Balloon crews and quickly shifted gears to plan my photography from on board the balloon rather than from the ground. The morning was gorgeous - the sunrise was spectacular and I have many more images of the flight. This image was created after about a 60 minutes into the flight when we were descending and preparing to land. Many other balloons were descending around us and I capitalized on the moment when this balloon cast its shadow across the perfect green landing field. The balloon landed shortly after taking this shot.

Lighting

I specifically timed this shot to take advantage of the placement of the shadow across the field.

Equipment

This was shot handheld with a Nikon D610 and a 70-200 Nikkor F2.8 lens.

Inspiration

I was eager to capture an unusual perspective given that I was shooting from another balloon. Many of my shots were beautiful that morning but this one stood out because of the "looking down" perspective which most people do not get to see when viewing hot air balloons.

Editing

I did some modest post-processing in Lightroom and Photoshop to create the vignette and to enhance the exposure.

In my camera bag

I usually take only two lens with me despite the many lens that I have in my master kit. This time I had the 70-200 telephoto and the 16-35 wide angle lens. Once in the air on the balloon, I found that the wide-angle was almost useless as we were too far from most subjects.

Feedback

When taking images while moving in flight do not be afraid of a fast shutter speed. It is critical to have a fast enough shutter to avoid blurred images - so I shoot in shutter priority mode when shooting from a moving vehicle (or balloon). In this case I shot this image at 1/100 sec - which is not very fast - and I was lucky that this image was not blurry. Other images that I shot at this time were affected by the motion - I should have been shooting closer to 1/500 sec.

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Balloon Landing