Cave Creek Balloon Festival 4 January 2014

This version of the Cave Creek Balloon Festival was much easier to photograph simply because it wasn't as cold as last years. Last year, temperatures hovered around the 30 degree mark, making picture taking difficult while wearing gloves. Several thousand people joined me this evening along with well over a dozen balloons.

The photo at the top is actually made up of nine separate photos, stitched together with the Canon stitch program, then imported into Lightroom 5 for final edits.   The nine photos, taken vertically instead of horizontally, did not stitch together with Photoshop, even with several setting changes.   The Canon program did the stitch on the first run and did it fast.   

The guitar player was part of the entertainment while there was still some light out.   I did a little High Dynamic Range (HDR) toning on the photo and thought it came out nice.  

By the way, my camera is the Canon 5D Mark III and with the 24-105mm lens, my primary walking around lens.   I wanted to try something different with a night time event.   I set the camera to shutter priority, or Tv on a Canon, and auto ISO.   With the low noise feature on new cameras using high ISO, I thought I could get away with letting the camera decide.   The f/stop was at f/4.0   and most of the time I used a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second.   Everything was hand held.   

Balloon festivals are like carnivals, rodeos, and NASCAR; they attract many interesting characters.   I found one photogenic fellow working one of the balloons.

Almost out of the area, I turned around and saw a display of toy balloons and thought it might make a nice photo.

Enjoy all of my photographs from the balloon festival!

Keep Shooting!

Jim Patterson

http://JamesGordonPatterson.com

http://www.hypersmash.com/dreamhost/

Carefree Balloon Festival

The third annual Carefree Balloon Festival hosted nearly a dozen balloons on Saturday 21 January in Carefree, just north of Phoenix.  The big excitement was one of the tethered balloons caught fire and broke loose.  Luckily the pilot was able to land it about a mile away in a golf course.  I actually discovered I took a shot of the runaway balloon while photographing one of the bands performing.  It’s one of the photos in the Flickr collection at the bottom of this blog, partially obscured by a tree.  You can tell something unusual is happening because everybody was looking away from my camera and toward the balloon. 

The time of day prevented a lot of challenges for a photographer.  While there was still some light, I was able to take photographs at ISO 400.  But as it got darker, I found I had to increase the ISO or light sensitivity to 800, 1600, and then when it was really dark I was shooting my Canon 7D at about 3200 ISO. 

Trying to photograph the colored lights and the band was impossible at 1600 ISO.  I was using an all-purpose Tamron f/3.5 18-270mm lens that day.  Other wiser choices might have been a Canon “nifty 50mm” f/1.8 lens or even a Canon 28-135mm f/2.8 lens.  Generally speaking, the lower the f/stop number on the lens, the more light it will let in the camera.  You want the “fastest glass” possible for these evening shoots.  What about using a tripod or even a monopod?  Sure, that would enable you to take photos at various f/stops at longer exposures and lower ISO settings, UNLESS THE TARGET IS MOVING!  Then you’ll still get motion blur.  In my opinion, having a camera like the Canon 7D is the best choice because its ISO setting will go to a whopping 12800!  Now, at that high an ISO expect some noise in the photographs.  But camera technology is such that you will see many of my night shots taken at 3200 and a few at 6400 were pretty darn sharp.

My digital darkroom or program of choice is Lightroom, where I probably do 90 percent or more of my editing.  Here, you can make lighting adjustments, do some sharpening, and control a bit for noise.  You the viewer have the final decision; are the photographs still appealing? 

Locally, next up for me is the Carefree Indian Market and Cultural Festival February 17-19.  There will be live music and Native American hoop and fancy dancing, so there should be fun and colorful photo opportunities available.  Then after that will be the Cave Creek Rodeo on the last days of March.  

Happy Shooting!

Jim Patterson

http://JamesGordonPatterson.com

Photos from my Flickr Site