For the past few years, I have attended Santa Paula's annual Citrus Classic Balloon Festival to take in the beautiful sights and sounds of hot air balloons. This past weekend was the weekend to grab my camera and make some images of the festival.

While I love the beautiful colors of the balloons when night falls and the balloons start to "glow", I love watching the set up of these massive balloons. The work and human power that goes into making the balloons light up the night sky is pretty amazing. Crews set up the balloons, handlers hold the balloons to keep them from taking a premature flight, and pilots work the controls to make this a beautiful and memorable event.

Crews roll out balloons on the ground before blowing fans into them to inflate them.

Crew members hold open the balloon so that air can get into the material.

A hot air balloon pilot blows heat into the balloon.

A young attendee is mesmerized by the balloons.

An attendee looks at his camera phone to review his pictures.

Last weekend, Santa Paula experienced an influx of hot air balloons for the third Citrus Classic Balloon Festival. About 16-18 balloons showed up for a soiree of color. I caught a few photos as the balloons were rolled out and set up before the sun set:

Taken with the Canon 5D Mark 2 (the only camera I use anymore), Canon EF 24-105 L. f/7.1 to get a good amount of focus, at 1/80, ISO 100. Cropping and color correction done in Lightroom 2.

I liked focusing on the guys that were working with the balloons to get them up and running for us to enjoy.

I played around a bit with this photo, keeping in mind the recent Creative Live weekend with David DuChemin, "Vision-Driven Photography":

Taken with Canon 5D Mark 2, Canon EF 24-105 L. f/5.6 at 1/25, ISO 200. This particular photo didn't go along with my original vision, and I wish I would have done a few things differently with it, but I knew that it was important to the story of the balloons. In terms of editing, I used Lightroom to direct the eye a little bit by using some gradient filters.

In terms of the vision I had for this event, these photos are the closest to what I wanted:

The colors and the detail of the balloon are pretty much what I wanted (the execution to get exactly what I wanted was just a bit off).

I love this photo because it shows the wonder and awe that goes along with seeing these huge balloons lit up. It also looks a bit like the Wizard of Oz to me.

This little guy was tuckered out before night even fell:

I had to get his picture, his face was perfect.

Check out the rest of the set here , I really like how a lot of these photos turned out, and can't wait for the festival next year!

Thanks for stopping by!