Photographs and commentary by Dick Snoke
Travelled by car, train and foot to the Meadows at Piedmont Park in Atlanta for this first ever ballooning event in the city. Not the best-organized event I’ve attended, but no problems either. Due to some soggy ground, the dozen balloons were more tightly-bunched than I would have preferred for photography, but ya work with what ya got.
The event was announced at 5-9 pm, and we arrived shortly after 5 pm. But there were no balloons until well after 6 pm, so we had a chance to walk around the venue and scout places to shoot from.
Once the ballooning began, things got very busy The balloons were limited to 50 feet in elevation, and each balloon was tethered by four lines. That meant it was difficult to move in among the balloons, so I stayed on the perimeter.
I had hoped for broken clouds and some color as the sun set, but that was not to be. I got only a single shot with any sort of sunset, and there we no backlighting of the balloons as the sun got low in the sky.
However, the glow went well. I had a very difficult time focusing since there was little to no pattern in which balloons would glow at any time, or if some of them would ever glow.
Still a good time overall, although I think I’ll go back to Helen next year rather than this event.