Self Indulged Online Travel Magazine

April14th

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Well who would have thought that Canberra would be fun?  I was there for the magazine doing a feature on the balloon festival which runs for 9 days. On the first day of the festival we could see that the weather wasn’t looking too great so we ducked off to Jindabyne for a few days and came back to Canberra later in the week.  This shot was taken on the Saturday morning when all of the balloons managed to get up (ahem..you’d think with so much ‘hot air’ in Canberra it wouldn’t be a problem!) We were following them on the road when the sunlight started to shine through the dark clouds, giving off that magical light that sometimes happens on a wet day. Dave pulled the campervan over onto the verge and I legged it over to the lake (Lake Burley Griffin for those playing along at home) and captured the balloons as they flew (VERY low) overhead. A couple of them actually touched the water and kind of hung in suspended animation. I was especially pleased to have captured the golliwog – he’s my favourite :-)

Big thanks to the team at Balloons Aloft for their patience and professionalism and also for the brekky on the day we stood around a field for 2 hours waiting for the weather to come good.



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12 Comments

  • Comment by Dave Catley — April 14, 2010 @ 10:13 am

    Glad to here you had a good time in Canberra :)

    Love the ballon shot, definately looks like a few of them are about to ditch in the lake, did they make it back up into the air again?

    Check out my blog if you’re interested in some baby dolphin pics from Monkye Mia, after all who can resist a baby dolphin …

  • Comment by MatthewSaul — April 14, 2010 @ 11:03 am

    Great shot Sandy, dont think you could get a better compostion than that!

  • Comment by Sandy @ Shots — April 14, 2010 @ 12:19 pm

    Thanks Matt, it was pretty easy with so many flying overhead.

  • Comment by Sandy @ Shots — April 14, 2010 @ 12:23 pm

    Hey Dave, How’s it going? Yup they all made it back out of the water although a few did look like they were struggling for a while. Thankfully these were private balloons, they tend not to play this game in the big baskets with paying customers on board!
    Off to your site now to check out the baby dolphins :-)

  • Comment by hodgy1 — April 15, 2010 @ 6:32 am

    Always good to see a nice ballooning photo Sandy, I would love to visit this event one day. I have heard it’s pretty cool.

    cheers Pete.

  • Comment by Sandy @ Shots — April 15, 2010 @ 8:17 pm

    Hey Pete,
    It was good fun…there was a huge Kookaburra balloon went up that same morning and he was lovely!

  • Comment by truenorthmark — April 18, 2010 @ 11:02 am

    Sweet Sandy!

    I have jumped out of a few of those puppies!

  • Comment by Sandy @ Shots — April 18, 2010 @ 6:30 pm

    Hey Mark….I knew you were a little crazy but not that crazy! I assume you had a parachute :-)
    How high do they have to be before it’s safe to jump?

  • Comment by truenorthmark — April 18, 2010 @ 7:53 pm

    Yep with a parachute and the lowest that I would get off a ballon would be about 1500 ft, but I am sure there are those how would take that to another level of crazy!

    I have done about 5 ballon jumps from heights ranging from 2,000 ft to 5,000. They are waycool fun as there is no airspeed at all and you really get the sensation of falling until you reach terminal velocity!

  • Comment by Sandy @ Shots — April 19, 2010 @ 6:48 am

    I’m not a huge fan of flying and I’m not really fond of heights either but I have to say I did enjoy being up in a hot air balloon, it was pretty serene. Don’t think I could jump out of one though…especially from 5000ft. I try to avoid anything that involes the term “terminal velocity” !!

  • Comment by mervfrench — May 1, 2010 @ 9:16 pm

    Hi Sandy …cool shot.

    Yep ballooning is great fun just drifting along and watching and listening. If they could work out a way to make the burners super quite it would be even better.

    Cheers.

  • Comment by Sandy @ Shots — May 3, 2010 @ 9:42 pm

    Cheers Merv…I didn’t mind the burners…it was a pretty cold morning:-)

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