christopher’s lives (v5.3)

balloon season is here and this is an old favorite of mine with some new modifications to snap it up a bit… here is the original from oct 1, 2005…

this was taken at albuquerque international balloon fiesta with my first real digital camera (lotsa stuff is broke at that link, btw)… i have no idea how it came out so good - it was totally a lucky shot, pointed, clicked, and it was just there… i have always had an affection for it and there was very little to do when i touched it up for this re-post… i enhanced the colors a little and sharpened the whole thing a bit, cropped a bit off the bottom, brightened it a hair, but, that’s it… i am considering doing a fancier edit, but, this will do for now…

anyway, tomorrow is the local, pathetic little balloon thing and we are about three weeks away, i guess from the REAL balloon fiesta in abq and, rest assured, i will be taking my dslr and my little canon p&s with plenty of cards…

‘Burque Babble: Ten Reasons I Don’t Heart the Balloon Fiesta

but, he clearly loves movies so he can’t be all bad…

and, speaking of movies, he points out that he teaches “Humanities and Film at a local middle school“… WHAT?!! how come they didn’t have that in MY day? i’d be hangin’ with Aronofsky right now!
or something…

anyway, after reading a few posts, i like his writing, i deem him interesting, i’ll add him to my “Looking At” list and keep an eye on him for awhile…

i finally got a free night, haven’t had one in a couple of weeks, and i spent it sorting pics, making albums, and uploading them…

sigh… just look at all i do for you…

anyway, so, the morning of october 8th, chelsey, billy and tara, and angela, their friend from minnesota came over before the sun came up, luke and asbel were supposed to meet us here, but ran late, so, we had to leave without them… billy and tara have seen a fiesta or two from afar, but never from the field, and angela has never seen it at all…
we were already running very late, ended up making two stops before we even got really and truly underway, and then there was the disastrous “shortcut” fernando recommended… it is still unproven if it was his fault :P

little bits of the story are told in the albums themselves…
i have given up on getting luke’s pics, so, you will see mine and the pics billy took with andy’s camera… as far as that cam goes (it’s a canon, mine’s a nikon), man, does it get some vibrant colors! however, sometimes they look very oversaturated and downright artificial… oh, and the digital zoom is absolutely hideous and billy used it ALOT… it isn’t his fault, he didn’t know…
oh, and angela brought a video cam, the non-digital kind that takes, uh, tapes, i believe they are called (how 20th century!) and she really needs to send me a copy! (i know you’re reading this!)

i didn’t post a whole ton of pics this time, probably less than a hundred, but, there are some cool ones… and, once again the reminder, streaming on this host is not a simple matter, so, when you see a video (i think there is only one in this set, but it’s worth it), right-click, save it, view it on your computer… and remember that you will see thumbnails and, when you click on them, you still only see sized-down versions of each pic, so, if you want the full effect, click on the pics when you see them…

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sooo, anyway, now that the aibf pics are up, that leaves 50 or so pics from the conference in belen, a good 500 or so from the TMEW conference (yes, i said five hundred), and a couple dozen or more various pics i have taken this month still to be sorted, “albumized”, and uploaded and i haven’t any free time until MAYBE the weekend, but, i doubt it…
we’ll see…

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anyway, another great balloon fiesta with some great people, can’t wait until next year!

without any further ado, click here to view the final set of pics from the 2005 International Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta (</keyword seeding>)

eh, i’m getting there…

at about 5am on saturday morn, billy, tara, chelsey, and angela came to my place, and we all hung out and waited on luke and asbel to arrive…

the rest of the story will be told later, once i have pics sorted and uploaded… i have mine and billy’s and they are sorted for the most part but I’M STILL WAITING ON LUKE’S (hint hint!!)… once i get luke’s i will sort them, make albums from all three sets, upload, and then i will post…

i love this one so much, i just had to make a post…
it was just posted yesterday by phrog8v8r to the AIBF flickr pool…

*right click, save as, set as wallpaper* :)

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and, btw, not to take away from that pic, but while i am pointing out pics, this is one of the coolest special shapes i have ever seen… and be sure to read the comments under it…

and this one is like Skies of Arcadia come to life…

just to save any more confusion:
THIS IS THE MAIN LINK TO ALL MY AIBF PICS

there, you will see a folder with the pics andy and i took on saturday the 1st and the folder with a few quick pics i got on sunday the 2nd and monday the 3rd… there is one vid, this album creator calls it a directory, right click and save as to view it, it is a pan of the mass ascension from the back door of my church, nothing special…
i also added a few from this new collection to my flickr photostream and from there added a couple each to the three groups i am in…

because of my schedule, i will probably not have any new pics until this saturday… and i hope we don’t get rained out…

anyway, speaking of flickr, i was thoroughly surprised to get an invite to a new flickr group called “New Mexico Photos by New Mexico Photographers“, which has an emphasis on scenery and we all know i take a lot of those :P
anyway, of the currently four other members, i am very humbled, beginning to wonder why i even bother to pick up a camera, those folks have some breath-taking photography… click on the members list at the group and browse some of their collections…
(maybe i should have taken that photography class the DOL offered to pay for…)

The pics are finally up!

not as good as the pics i made last year, but, meh…

i used the Experience skin again and it is annoying no end that it labels videos as directories… i even added comments to the vids, so the comments would appear under the icon, but, it didn’t do that… so, you will have to keep that in mind… i do recommend the vids, there are some good ones this time… also, remember, my host is weird about streaming, wants me to put them under a subdomain and such, so, you will have to right click, save as and view them on your computer…

also, this time i have sort of a guest photog… as mentioned in the last post, Andy Shreck went with me and took a bunch of pics himself, so, there is a folder of my selections from the pics he took… he has the entire collection in his possession, but alas, no site of his own, no flickr account, nothin’…
for the record, as i was sorting through all the pics (from a collection of over 500, i whittled down to 177 pics and vids) i was more and more certain that he took better pics than i did :(
anyway, i also added a few that i took to my flickr photostream and added a couple each to the three flickr groups i am in…

while i was playing around in flickr, i went ahead and grabbed the flash “flickr badge”, which is fairly cool… see it over on the sidebar right above the albuquerque section… i may or may not keep it…

anyway, i am hoping for no wind on saturday so i can get much better pics…

oh, and not only are all the photos in albums, i added comments to many of them, rather than write up a whole blog post, pointing out certain pics… you will see a truncated version below the thumbnails and the whole comment when you view the screen size version…
i took a few today hanging out behind the church and will have a whole new batch saturday, so, i will force myself to learn how to add albums to the one already there and will post when they are up…

went with andy this morning - his first time to ever see the aibf, he has lived here less than a year…

it was spectacular, breathtaking, and awesome except for one very major thing…

the wind was very bad and blew the balloons away pretty much as soon as they were off the ground… those who remember my posts from last year recall me talking about how we were totally surrounded by hundreds of balloons and that just wasn’t the case this time… it was still great, but, i am looking forward to hopefully a less windy day next time…

andy and i took about 500 pics (and i took a few vids) and i have them all on my comp, but, they need to be sorted and uploaded, and i seriously doubt i will get to that tonight, unfortunately… if i do, i will post, of course…

next saturday, i load up the lockmans in the van (and anyone else who wants to come) and it will be a group trip… the lockmans have seen aibf once (now twice) from their house (they have a fantastic view from their backyard in rio rancho around northern and 528), but, never from the field… really looking forward to that trip…

Edit:

while waiting for my pics to go up (i am sorting them now, have them down to less than 200), go check out this great, well-written short bit posted today about this morning’s mass ascension on Eucatastrophe (a blog i have been watching as a candidate for my abq links; as you may have noticed it has been on my “looking at” list over there on the right for a little while now) that takes an angle i absolutely love and wish i had thought of first :P
it’s called People Fiesta at the Balloon Fiesta…

remember the Smokey Bear balloon i took a pic of?

well, he made big news today…

with headlines like Balloon Gets Caught In Radio Tower [koat tv] and Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta ending with a bang: “Smokey the Bear” balloon is wrapped around the top of a 670ft AM radio tower, four people in gondola [fark]…
and someone in the fark thread mentioned it was even on cnn…

behold…

i ALMOST saw it happen… i was recording the mass ascension coverage on tv this morning and popping downstairs once in a while to see if there was anything worth taking pics of… last trip i had made down, i saw smokey and almost took a pic since he was in a good spot, but, i have not been taking many pics since we went to the event, not much chance of topping those… anyway, so, i then came back upstairs… within a minute or two they were talking about it on tv… i bet i missed it by 30 seconds…

by the time i ran out there, all i saw was this…

the reports are still coming in, but, it is now confirmed that there were three people aboard, all ok, they were able to get out of the gondola to the ladder that runs inside it and climb down… it took nearly an hour… there was the 70-year-old pilot, and two passengers on their first balloon ride ever… they were 14 and 10 years old… he sent them down the ladder first…

here is the pilot climbing down the tower, and here he is after they got him in a cherry picker, as he and a rescue worker look up at the tattered remnants of the balloon…

of course, the big question now is how they are going to get that thing down from there…

garth’s informal predictions at America’s Outback didn’t include radio towers, but, turns out he was right about the power lines…
Balloon catches on live power line, no one injured
Balloon Fiesta Pilot Trips Up With Power Line

other headlines the last few days have included…
Balloon Fiesta Brings Injuries, Power Outage
Rough landings, snagged balloons mark morning
Pilots Injured As Balloon Makes Hard Landing Near Chama
Gas balloon makes hard landing, injures pilots

here is a google news search if you want to see more…

and the whole 10-day event has also been well blogged…

America’s Outback has great pics from the day 7 special shapes mass ascension…

mr. bohnsack posted many pics from the day 9 mass ascension with links to over 400 high-res pics from the three previous years… he also links a few other abq bloggers posting about the aibf… (including me; plus, i fit his comment about those with “freshly purchased digital marvels”…)

and Quirky Burque even gave us the Balloon Fiesta Avoidance Plan…

i am probably not going to keep up with posting all the follow up news and/or blog posts about it all, but, i will definitely get pics and vids again next year, and post ‘em all here…

there are a few pics and one vid from the last few days that i did not comment on, and now that it is all done, the vids will stay for a while until we need the space, so, take one last trip to the now completed AIBF collection…

first, i want to note that the day 3 night events and all of day 4 and 5 were rained out…

and now on with the post…

each event is better than the last…
though, in this case, it is because we actually went to where it was all happening…

when we got there a bit after 6am, it was still dark and there were a dozen or so glowing balloons in the sky for the dawn patrol and that was cool and all, but, at about 7am, the mass ascension officially started and suddenly we were surrounded, trapped in between rows of inflating ballons and the sound of generators and burners pretty much drowning out everything else…
and, as each one filled, it lifted off, as you can see in this video…
within minutes, the sky was filled with them… and, actually, ’sky’ is the wrong way to put it, they were not only up, they were on every side, filling vision from from ground to directly overhead…

just a few brief comments…
because of the perspective, you can really see how gigantic these things are (one balloonist had a bumper sticker that read “Have YOU ever tried to park a six-story house?”), and because we were right there, up close, the pics are much much better than before… i am particularly fond of this one and she got this amazing one…

other highlights in this batch include many special shapes (like a pirate, the bees, and the creamland cow), a few assorted interesting things like this balloon with no gondola, just a seat and a tank strapped to the guy’s back, the giant squirrel that flew down the vendor strip, right above the crowd, and pics/vids of the “chase crews” that actually catch landing balloons and get them stopped without the gondola full of people tipping over…

anyway, this collection is now, without a doubt, the best batch yet, there are more than usual because there were so many good ones and the videos are all very cool, i highly recommend watching all six of them before they are deleted…
so, don’t settle for the highlights above, go see everything…
all of the files in this batch start with “6-”…