Around July 4th most years I go back to visit my parents in England. I still get asked every year how the English celebrate July 4th. The answer, of course, is that we ignore it and pretend we didn't want the colonies anyway.
Last year we decided to give Virgin Atlantic a try as our carrier. In the past we've flow direct Houston – London on Continental or British Airways so flying via New York to pick up the Virgin Atlantic transatlantic leg was a new departure for us. Apart from the messy terminal change at Newark, the split journey actually worked out quite well and maybe its just in my mind but I'd swear we all dealt better with the jet lag too.
My parents still live on the edge of the marlborough downs. Returning from an excursion one day we noticed a balloon floating gently by. I pulled the car off the road and grabbed my camera with a 100-400mm lens and shot off a few frames. The sun had already set and the light was fading. The pilot of the balloon was looking for somewhere close to a road to land.
This was one of a handful of shots where the white balance kind of makes sense. My camera was on auto and other shots have a color cast I've not yet been able to shake.
Talking of shake, this shot was taken at the 400mm end of the range, 1/80th sec at f / 8.0. I hadn't zeroed out my camera after leaving the prior location, hence the low shutter speed.
My wife and I thought it ironic that we should see a Virgin balloon having flown Virgin Atlantic but we were both thankful that Virgin Atlantic fly Boeing 747s and not balloons such as this!
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Production Data
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Battery Grip: Canon BG-E6 Battery Grip
Lens: Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS
Processing: Lightroom 4.0
Processing: photomatix 4.02
Processing: photoshop cs5
Processing: Topaz denoise 5
Processing: Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4 (Nik Software)
