Balloon Chase

[Polar01]

We out on Wednesday morning and did a little balloon chasing, The owner takes people once or twice a day for a ride over the hill of Northumberland in Ontario. I going to wait until we get the leaves turning before I go. Great fun even just taking the photos.

Cheers:

Allan

Millbrook Tower we have had lift off



Lines

[Donald]

Wonderful stuff. Both are powerful images that garb the attention.

On the first one, I wonder if we need to see as much sky and trees. I acknowledge the idea of the balloon in this vast expanse of sky and countryside. However, one suggestion I'd make is that the overall impact of the image would be different (and, of course, it would be the photographer's choice) if it was cropped to portrait orientation and excluded the sunlight on the left and the aircraft trail on the right. Then you'd take out 2 of the 5 elements in the image and leave only 3 - balloon, sky, trees. That would make a more stark image.

The second one is a cracker!

[Ken Curtis]

I have a little bit different suggestion for cropping the first image than Donald expressed. I would crop most all of the black off the bottom and maybe a little off the right side. The glow of the Sun balances the balloon and it makes terrific use of negative space. Except for the irregularity in the tree line, there are no details to view in the black area. It is a wonderful shot, and I wish I had taken it.

I can see a slight halo at the tree line and along the top of the balloon in the bottom image. Perhaps a little less sharpening or different processing would solve the problem. But I agree with Donald in that it is a wonderful image. Wish I been there to take that one too.

[Eduardo Rijo]

I like the green field in the second, but booth are very nice!

[Polar01]

Donald: thanks very much for your words, getting a cracker from you is worth a tractor trailer of crackers even if they are the good ones. As for the crop on the first one, I really did not give much thought to it, as you and Ken put a couple of suggests forth, I will think on it instead of just getting the image ready to post.
Ken: Thanks for pointing that out, I applied a high pass filter, overlayed it with linear light, I then applied a mask and brushed it in on the balloon only, I guess that the brush was not soft enough and I got a little to close to the edge of the sky. In the future I will pay more attention to what I am doing.
Eduardo: that is a nice green, the hay was freshly cut the day before, so it still had that sweet smell of fresh hay. I grew up on a farm and lot the smell of fresh cut hay, even those other smells that one finds on a working farm.

Cheers:

Allan