Montague Balloon Festival, Montague, California
(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse - All Rights Reserved
This was my first time to go to the hot-air balloon festival in the small ranching community of Montague in Northern California. It's an annual event on the last weekend in September so this won't be my last time to go there. What a great time!! A fabulous backdrop provided by rolling hills. Large enough to be interesting and still easy to find places to park, easy to get great shots of the balloons.
This photo was made on Saturday, September 25, the second day of the festival. Ascension was at sunrise (roughly 7AM). This photo was made about an hour later. What I liked about it enough to want to work with it was the position of the two balloons, the foothills in the background, and the two people in the left foreground. Everything works for me.
This is an infrared photograph. The lack of the bright white foliage so typical of infrared comes, I think, from two elements -- one, there isn't alot of foliage and, two, the early morning light meant less infrared radiation in the environment. Here are the details:
Camera: Nikon D90 converted to capture invisible light (infrared). 14-24mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens at 24mm. ISO 160. 1/200" at f/13. Hand-held.
Post-Processing. I developed this image in Lightroom. The steps were: Converted to black & white. In the Tone Curve panel, I selected "Strong Contrast" (a personal preference -- I like stronger contrast for most of my infrared photographs), lightening the lights and darkening the blacks. In the split toning panel, I used my usual color combination of bronze for the highlights and mauve for the shadows. (Highlights: bronze set at 37 for hue and 37 for saturation. Shadows: mauve set at 261 for hue and 20 for saturation. Balance set at +52). Kodak HIE (high speed infrared film) had a lovely grain to it and so I played around with the Grain feature in Lightroom 3 to see if I could come close to what film used to do. This is my first try with it and I'm mostly pleased -- I'll keep playing with it though. And then of course I finished off with a little vignetting in the corners.
I hope you enjoy this image.
WHOA! This is awesome, Darlene. What a departure or you...What a wonderful happenstance! Everything came together perfectly for this shot and you have the eye to recognize it...and enhance it for our viewing pleasure!
ReplyDeleteHope your computer problems float away. ;)
Harley, Harley, show us some motorcycles. BTW, sweet image.
ReplyDeleteHey Sharon. Thanks! It was an awesome morning. In color there's warmth and cheerfulness. But in infrared the balloons are almost luminescent. I'm glad you like it -- was waiting to hear what you'd say :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks Bill. It IS sweet, isn't it. Harley?? One of these days -- it didn't have for me what this one has so in time I'll get to the Harley -- you'll be among the first to know :-)
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