Balloon Glow at Rochester Fest (Original Photography)

Rochester, MN has a festival with the very original name, Rochester Fest. When I was a kid growing up here in this Minnesota city, home to the Mayo Clinic and over 100,000 people, the festival was a pretty exciting fair. These days, it's pretty unexciting, for the most part, but there are still a couple interesting things going on during the week. One of these is the Balloon Glow.

^{"One of these is not like the others..."}
Originally scheduled for Thursday night, but changed to Friday on account of weather, the balloon glow is a chance for hot air balloon pilots to show their balloons off before the Saturday morning race. The glow is actually much more exciting than the race, at least to me.

^Fire!
In previous years, the balloons were gated off. This year, though, you could walk right up to see them and chat with the pilots. I had a good chat with a couple of them, and they even let me take some photos up the balloon while igniting the heater.

^{Really Big Candle Lamp}
These photos were a good test for me. My camera's decade-old sensor technology suffers the most in low light and has low dynamic range. Getting a usable image can be quite the trick, even with a good lens. I'm pretty pleased with the image quality, though I'm sure a modern full-frame sensor would have gotten far superior results.

One of the pilots was trying to guess the weight of the balloons. The basket weighs about 200 pounds, the gas tanks another 75, the burner another 100, and the fabric weight of the balloon is about 250. Add a few people and the total weight probably approaches a ton. My first question was the total mass, and I got a laugh and a response along the lines of, "We're balloon pilots, not scientists!"

^{Portrait of a Balloonist}
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^{Feeling Deflated?}