A Few Of My Favorite Things - Shooting The Alabama Jubilee
Maybe I should say that the Alabama Jubilee used to be one of my favorite things. I have just spent 24 hours in the last two days covering the Jubilee which is anchored around hot air balloons. These things are absolutely great to shoot pictures of. It is one of those situations where a blind monkey could get a photo and a person with any kind of game can really nail some beautiful photographs.
And I got to fly. Local pilot Tom Lane who lives in Somerville, Alabama, took me and reporter Catherine Godbey up in his balloon, The Griffin II. I think that riding in a hot air balloon is about as close as a human being will get to walking on air. It is incredible! Just don’t drop the camera. It can be a long drop with a sudden stop which is usually pretty bad for the camera. Otherwise, hot air ballooning is just about as cool and experience as you can have.
This was actually my third flight. The first time I went up the weather was very overcast and we almost didn’t fly. I got some decent stuff but it didn’t sing like I wanted it to. Then, a couple of years ago, I got my second flight and the day was spectacular. Yesterday, the weather was decent but hazy which made for a few problems. Our pilot was one the last to take off so we were a bit behind the rest of the balloons. It made for great pictures of the balloons massed together in the air but the haze caused some frames to simply be unusable. All the problems melted away as we closed in on the other balloonists. The haze factor was eliminated leaving me with just smooth light to work with.
Then, Saturday night, I went back to Point Mallard Park for the balloon glow event which features the balloonists inflating but staying on the ground. At dusk, they fire their propane burners and light up their bags so that the balloons glow. It is really beautiful and the photo opportunities are just fantastic. I shot with my person camera, the EOS 5D for both the flight and the glow because I wanted the beautiful saturation and clean images I get with this camera. I was thrilled with the results. Except for the length of the day which began at 5:30 a.m and ended at 11 p.m. this was a wonderful day to be a photojournalist.
You can view a slide show of all the images I posted at decaturdaily.com and click on the link to the show. I hope you enjoy it.
About the photos: Everything in this gallery was done with my EOS 5D and either the 24-70 f2.8 or the 70-200 f2.8 all shot available light. For the balloon glow pictures, I used the incandescent color balance setting and shot real slow but still hand held. I don’t think any of the images were shot above ISO 400. I used the human monopod technique I detailed in an earlier post to steady the camera.
Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
