Nearly a month ago I went to the NJ Festival of Ballooning to see the sunrise ascension. I’d been to this particular festival twice before, but those times were at least thirty and twenty years ago, and I was never there at the crack of dawn before.
As it turns out, I still have not seen a sunrise ascension. Some threatening clouds rolled in at an inopportune time, and so the launch was canceled. But a few of the balloons inflated anyway, and remained tethered to the field.
It would have been nice to see dozens of balloons rising into the sky, but this was enjoyable in its own way, and I got plenty of pictures, just the same.
Plenty of Pictures
Here’s the camera and film info for the whole set. Hover over, click, or tap a photo if you want to know which picture was taken with which equipment.
Remember in my Keyport post recently I mentioned that I was struggling a bit with using my grandfather’s 135mm lens with my new Minolta XG-M? Well, I had much better luck at the balloon festival than I ever did in Keyport.
Most of the images I took with that lens were very well exposed. And the ones that weren’t? Well, one of them actually ended up being my favorite image of the whole event! Isn’t this a cool shot? It reminds me of an old post card or something. The things that make it a less-than-perfect exposure are exactly the things that give it character, in my opinion. I love the grain 🤩
I have one more set of pictures to share from the XG-M’s inaugural roll of film. I’ll try to do that before another week goes by 🙂
