Hot Air Balloon Rally at Pellissippi State Technical Community College 2005

These pictures were made during a hot air balloon rally at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, TN on September 24, 2005. The photo opportunity was fantastic and many thanks to Tom Roush and his crew of Liz, Kim, and Debbie for giving me the opportunity to make a short hop in one of the balloons!

Balloon Rally at PSTCC 2005 Balloon Rally at PSTCC 2005 Balloon Rally at PSTCC 2005

The photos above are a general view of some of the balloons at the rally. Notice how the "Happy Teeth" (Brush, Smile, Floss) balloon has rotated its direction in the two photos.

Pi-Ball tracking balloon PSTCC 2005 Balloon Rally at PSTCC 2005 Inside Roy Smith's balloon, flown by Tom Roush PSTCC 2005

More photos... The photo on the left is a wind tracking balloon (a Pi-Ball, short for Pilot-Balloon) that was released to see which way the wind was blowing as a function of altitude. Those balloonists really have a cool sense of humor, eh? The photo in the middle was one of the rainbow colored balloons at the rally. The photo on the right was made from inside Roy Smith's balloon, flown by Tom Rausch.

Inside Roy Smith's balloon PSTCC 2005 Glow Picture PSTCC 2005 Glow Picture PSTCC 2005 Glow Picture PSTCC 2005

Still more photos... The photo on the left is another flame shot from inside Roy's balloon. The next three photos are from the glow. The balloons are quite spectacular when they are lit up after dark!


Photography NotesIn all pictures above, I used was a Canon Digital Rebel with a 28-105 mm ES lens. The photography was tricky, especially during the glow, where light ranges went from extremely bright at the flame to the almost pitch black of night. It was very easy to blow out the images of the flames! For the glow picture on the left, I ended up using f4.3 and 1/6 sec at ISO 400. Of course, the camera was on a tripod! The images were all shot in RAW mode and then converted to JPEG and resized to fit on the web.

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